In Atlanta, a legal sideshow over training of circus elephants

In Atlanta, the storied Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus is coming to town  this week. At the same time, a legal sideshow has sprouted up over the question of how to handle elephants humanely.

At issue is the use of an ancient, and some say cruel, tool used in the training and control of elephants. Known as a bullhook, or ankus, it is typically a long shaft with a metal hook at the end that is used to prod, and sometimes punish the animals. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals alleges that in the Ringling Bros. circus, "elephants are beaten, hit, poked, prodded and jabbed with sharp hooks, sometimes until bloody."

Concern about the use of bullhooks prompted commissioners in Fulton County, Ga., which includes much of Atlanta, to ban the use of the instruments in June, following the lead of municipalities in Florida, New York, and other states, according to Johnny Edwards of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

At the time, an official with Feld Entertainment, the owner of Ringling Bros., said that if bullhooks were banned, it would be impossible to have elephants at the circus.

This week, a county judge issued a temporary restraining order that prevents the county from enforcing animal control laws in the city, according to the paper.

Fulton County Commissioner Rob Pitts, who voted for the ban last year, said that the legal question revolves around the lack of a specific intergovernmental agreement between Atlanta and the county, which provides animal control for the city for a fee.

It is unclear what any of this means for Ringling Bros., which plans to roll into downtown Atlanta's Philips Arena on Wednesday for a six-day engagement. But presumably it means that the show will go on.

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-- Richard Fausset in Atlanta

Photo: Elephants are a draw for circus-goers; their treatment is an issue in several cities, including Atlanta. Here, young children line the sidewalk to watch elephants from the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus parade by in Washington in 2009. Credit: Shawn Thew/EPA

'Big Miracle': True story behind film about 3 ice-stranded whales

This post has been corrected. See the note at the bottom for details.

Hardly anyone is unaware of the plight of the three gray whales that were stranded under the ice near Barrow, Alaska, in 1988 -- especially since the release of a new movie, "Big Miracle," which documents the two-week international effort to save them.

Less known is the precise fate of the whale that didn't make it; it disappeared under the ice as rescuers battled to rescue the remaining two.

But a marine biologist at the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration in Seattle thinks he may know the answer. The young whale, he believes, may have been scared off when someone mistakenly played recordings of killer whales, a sound that would terrify a gray whale, or at least create an urgent desire to leave.

"That would have been a fear thing," Dave Withrow, who works with the polar ecosystems program at the Alaska Fisheries Science Center, told the Los Angeles Times.

The revelation casts a bit of a shadow on the otherwise heartwarming rescue effort that brought together oil men, Russian icebreakers, U.S. government officials, eco-activists and whale-hunting Eskimos together in a saga that gripped television viewers around the world -- and is gaining new attention by way of the film starring Drew Barrymore and John Krasinski.

The true story was also documented recently by Anchorage Daily News reporter Richard Mauer, who covered the 1988 rescue and dug up his old notebooks to describe the massive endeavor. One of the highlights in his tale is the Soviet icebreaker officer who, at the tail end of the Cold War, invited American reporters aboard his vessel.

"Our whole country is watching, just like everyone else," the officer, Vladimir Morov, said at the time, referring to the phone calls he was fielding from reporters in Moscow.

Mauer also writes in detail about the role of the oil company executive who flew in and tried to move mountains to get heavy oil equipment on scene to help the stranded whales. Played by Ted Danson in the movie, that executive was Bill Allen, who later became famous when he went to prison for paying bribes to a variety of Alaska officials in a corruption scandal that included former U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens, who was accused of failing to report gifts from Allen.

Withrow was one of two NOAA marine mammal biologists and several other agency officials dispatched to the far northern tip of Alaska at Point Barrow, where an Inupiat whale hunter had spotted three young gray whales clinging to survival near a small hole in a sheet of ice that had otherwise closed in around them on all sides.

The whales already had their noses and chins bloodied, in one case to the bone, from ramming the ice to keep their small breathing hole open. The first instinct of some village leaders in Barrow was to shoot the animals and put them out of their misery -- but no one wanted to.

As reporters flew in and started filing stories, Withrow was asked to go up and help clarify some of the misleading information about gray whales that was coming out. Before he left Seattle, he shipped ahead some underwater sound projection equipment and tape recordings of the sound of gray whales breeding in Mexico -- a sound he hoped would lure the stranded whales to new holes that were being dug into the ice to help lure the creatures back toward open water.

He also included recordings of orcas, or killer whales, which prey on gray whales and which Withrow figured might be useful if needed to drive the whales toward safety.

Withrow asked someone to pick up the equipment from the airport and take it ahead to Barrow so it would be ready when he arrived. But when he got there, he found that someone not affiliated with NOAA had already unpacked the equipment and had actually begun broadcasting one of the tapes into the water -- the killer whale sounds.

"They projected something, we think it was the killer whale sounds. And the whales just split," he said.

"The two older ones made it back, and the younger one didn't."

Though it's only speculation, Withrow believes it's likely that the younger whale swam too far away in fear and couldn't or wouldn't come back, doomed under the thickening ice. "It's an incredibly interesting story, but people will never know the answer," he said.

The other enduring mystery in the "Big Miracle" is whether the other two whales survived. A Soviet icebreaker cut a channel to open water in the Chukchi and Bering seas, and Eskimo workers on shore, aided by donated chain saws, succeeded in cutting a series of breathing holes to guide the two whales to the channel.

The guiding part worked -- not so much because of the gray whale breeding tapes, as it turned out, but because of some small pumps donated by a company in Minnesota. The company had developed the pumps for ice fishing, and rescuers found that the sound and turbulence of the pumps acted as a powerful attractant to the whales. It then became relatively easy to attract the whales to new breathing holes as they were created.

At the end of the rescue effort, one of the whales was spotted from a helicopter in the ice-clogged channel that was the final path to safety, Withrow said. The other one was never seen.

Both whales, already weakened from their ordeal, would have had a tough swim through the ice floes and down to safety in California and Mexico.

"None of us actually saw the whales swim through," Withrow said. "People want to know if they actually made it. We don't know. There were reports of people seeing them all along the route, but there's no way of knowing. I'm sitting there three feet from these whales for two weeks and I'm not sure if I could identify them again."

In most cases, he said, gray whales are identified by patterns of barnacles on their skin, and barnacles don't stay the same for long.

"I'm sure people wanted to see them and we'd all like to believe they did, and that's what really happened," Withrow said. "But we don't really know."

What about Drew Barrymore's dramatic dive into the water to help untangle one of the whales, supposedly caught in some fishing net?

Didn't happen, Withrow said.

"We wouldn't have allowed it," he said. "Diving in those conditions where it's 30 and 40 below [zero] is just a really dangerous thing to do. And she wasn't tethered [in the movie], she didn't have a diving buddy, there's laws that would have prohibited it -- no."

[For the record, 6:01 p.m., Feb. 13: This post originally implied that Sen. Ted Stevens had accepted bribes from oil company executive Bill Allen. Stevens was accused of failing to report gifts from Allen.]

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Photo: A gray whale surfaces at a breathing hole cleared by Eskimos near Point Barrow, Alaska, in 1988, a rescue dramatized in the new film "Big Miracle." Credit: Bill Roth / Anchorage Daily News

Not only a prig would object to 10 grenades and a pig

It sounds like the title of the worst Dr. Seuss book ever. Or the latest prime-time vehicle for a misbehaving Charlie Sheen. Or the bitter memoir of an aging Black Panther:

Ten grenades and a pig.

In fact, it was none of those things, but a partial list of the weird haul police took out of a Miami home they paid a visit to Tuesday after responding to a fight between neighbors, according to the Miami Herald.

The grenades were the most significant cause for alarm, prompting the officers to evacuate nearby homes, reroute traffic and call in the bomb squad.

A local TV station, WPLG, reported that the call to police actually came after the out-of-state man who owned the home showed up and found, to his surprise, a man and a woman in their mid-30s living inside.

That brought the list to two squatters, 10 grenades and a pig.

The man and woman were arrested after they were found to be in possession of drugs and a weapon.

Altogether now: one handgun, marijuana, cocaine, 10 grenades, two squatters and a pig.

The grenades were taken to a lab to be analyzed.

No word on what happened to the pig.

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Alaska snow woes hit weary, starving moose

Alaskans can add one more woe to the problems that come with a long, cold winter full of heavy snow: weary moose.

It's actually gone beyond weary, wildlife advocates say, because moose are starving, perishing on railroad tracks and slamming through automobile windshields along highways where they go to escape the deep snow.

"It's belly deep, shoulder deep for these moose," Gary Olson, head of the Alaska Moose Federation, said in an interview. "The calves are the worst off. We've gotten reports of calves that have just given up, and the ravens are already picking at them, and they're still alive."

The state Department of Fish and Game this week announced approval of a permit for the federation to begin a diversionary feeding program for snow-stranded moose, allowing the clearing of plowed trails and the placing of bags of healthy feed as a respite until spring.

"We are authorizing this extraordinary step due to public safety concerns. We hope the diversionary feeding stations will lure moose away from roads and will reduce moose-vehicle collisions and other dangerous encounters," Tony Kavalok, assistant director of the state Division of Wildlife Conservation, said in a statement.

Snow is now 5 to 6 feet deep in many parts of south central Alaska. Anchorage has received 103 inches of snow so far this year, and parts of the state, notably Prince William Sound, have seen even more.

While moose with their long legs normally can navigate relatively heavy snow, plowing through 5 feet for any length of time is exhausting. Many make their way to highways or railroad tracks, where the snow is cleared, but dangers abound. 

In the Matanuska-Susitna borough north of Anchorage, the average number of vehicle-moose collisions is 270 annually. That number was reached near the end of December, and officials are predicting it could double by the end of winter.

There have been more than 600 moose collisions so far across the entire region down to the Kenai Peninsula, state officials say.

"The problem with your typical moose is the body mass of the animal is far above most cars, so when a moose is struck it has an unfortunate tendency to come in the windshield, and sometimes not to trigger the airbags," Olson said.

"With the increased fuel standards coming out of our capitol in D.C., the cars are getting smaller, and the moose aren't. So it's bad."

Alaska State Troopers spokeswoman Megan Peters said the agency has no records of how many people have been injured in moose collisions this year, but Alaska's history is replete with horror stories.

"I remember a wreck a few years back where all four people in the vehicle were killed after a moose was struck," Peters said in an email.

State authorities also get calls about defiant moose straddling plowed sidewalks at rest stops, defying those who hope to reach the restrooms.

Kavalok told the Los Angeles Times that the diversionary feeding authorized this week is different from the controversial feeding supplements sometimes offered wildlife whose winter ranges have been reduced, such as those put out for elk in Wyoming.

"This is not a supplemental feeding program. This is about getting moose attracted off the [road] corridors where they're concentrating so they're not subject to collision with motor vehicles," he said. "The whole issue is getting them a place to move to, and providing a way for them to get there."

The moose federation is using heavy track vehicles to clear snow pathways for the animals. Next, workers will put lay out feed bags to lure moose into the safety zones.

The organization has also resumed its road-kill salvage program, under which it sends trucks out to pick up carcasses and deliver them to charity groups where they can be safely butchered, avoiding the need, as is normally the case, to set up butcher stations right next to the roads.

Olson said workers are also conducting aerial surveys away from the highways, finding places where moose are stuck in deep snow near trees whose branches they can reach for food.

"What a moose does when it gets in really deep snow is they in essence plow a big circle out with their body, and they're going from tree to tree. Each time they take more of the limbs, and as they reach further up, they keep getting more wood and less bark -- and remember, the nutrients are in the bark. So they can literally perish with a stomach full of wood," Olson said.

"These herded moose are quickly exhausting any food where they are now."

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Photo: A moose forages on a branch in a neighborhood of west Anchorage. Credit: Erik Hill / Anchorage Daily News / Associated Press

Shhh, nice piggy: Georgia considers silencers for hog hunting

Poor Porky. He didn't even know what hit him.

In Georgia this week, the state Senate is considering a bill that would allow hunters to use silencers at the ends of their rifles or shotguns. The main objective: to help them quietly battle the scourge of wild hogs proliferating across the state's exurban fringe.

According to the Morris News Service, Senate Bill 301 was sponsored by Sen. John Bulloch, a Republican from the south Georgia town of Ochlocknee. Bulloch said sheriffs had asked him to introduce the bill to help cut down on noise complaints about all of the hunters currently blasting away at a feral hog population that Bulloch described as a "growing problem."

Morris reporter Walter C. Jones noted that a wild sow can pump out as many as 30 piglets a year, which can then bear their own litters a year after birth. The state natural resources department already issues night-hunting permits for the beasts to help keep them from rooting around on suburban lawns.

Bulloch also noted that hunters would be able to kill more than one hog, since the sound of their rifles wouldn't scare off the remaining pack.

If this sounds like stacking the deck against the pig population, consider the tale -- now grown to weird Georgia legend -- of Hogzilla, the 800-pound monster swine that was killed by a guy named Chris Griffin in 2004 on a Georgia hunting preserve.

For a while, Hogzilla was thought to be a hoax. But the Associated Press reported that a group of National Geographic experts headed down to south Georgia, exhumed Hogzilla, and confirmed its massive size.

"He was definitely a freak of nature," documentary producer Nancy Donnelly told the wire service in 2005. 

The senate's Natural Resources Committee unanimously approved the bill Wednesday. If it becomes law, outfitting a rifle with a silencer would require a federal permit and a trip to the gunsmith to get the barrel threaded.

For hunters hoping to go all James Bond on the next Hogzilla, the total bill for parts and labor would be about $1,000, Jones reports.

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Virginia to Washington, D.C.: Keep your rats to yourself

The message to Washington, D.C., from neighboring Virginia: Rats to you.

That would seem to sum up Virginia Atty. Gen. Ken Cuccinelli’s view of a Washington law that he says could lead the nation’s capital to send its rats across the Potomac.

Cuccinelli told CNSNews.com that Washington’s Wildlife Protection Act of 2010 requires pest control companies to capture rats "and capture them in families -- you figure out how you’re going to do that with rats -- and then you’ve got to relocate them." He's worried they’ll end up in Virginia.

"Not true," said Mary Cheh, the Washington councilwoman who sponsored the law, which she said seeks to require that other forms of wildlife, not rats, be treated as humanely as possible.

The law expressly exempts rats, she said in a statement. "I would have hoped that people would have been inclined to read the bill before raging against it."

In spite of that assurance, Maryland State Delegate Patrick McDonough said in an interview Friday that he plans to introduce the Rat Trafficking Act to block the relocation of any rats to his state.

The controversy comes as Washington’s mayor has complained about rats at the Occupy DC sites.

Cheh has been receiving nasty emails from around the country since Cuccinelli made his comments, which were picked up by conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh.

“ ‘Babe,' " she said, was "not the only four-letter word I was called in the emails."

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Photo: Washington, D.C.'s, Wildlife Protection Act of 2010 has Virginia and Maryland worried that the district might capture its rats and send them to neighboring states. The sponsor of that law dismisses such fears, suggesting critics actually read the law. Credit: Julie Jacobson / Associated Press

Tucson zoo fight involves elephants, Bob Barker

Connie is an Asian elephant, Shaba an African one. Nonetheless, they formed a bond, paling around together for three decades at Tucson’s Reid Park Zoo.

So when zoo officials announced plans last year to move Connie to the San Diego Zoo –- without her buddy Shaba -– animal activists were enraged.

The Tucson zoo was planning to bring in a herd of African elephants from San Diego, the Arizona Daily Star reported. Because zoo accreditation standards demand that new herds not mix African and Asian elephants, "due to multiple species differences and possible disease transmission issues," Connie would join other Asian elephants in San Diego.

But local activists Tracy Toland and Jessica Shuman considered the separation cruel. It “defies everything we know about elephants: their intelligence, profoundly deep social bonds (females remain with their mothers for life) and the capacity for deep emotion,” they wrote in the Daily Star.

The women launched a campaign to keep Connie, 44, and Shaba, 31, together and added some celebrity sizzle to the debate. At their behest, former “Price Is Right” host and well-known animal advocate Bob Barker recently offered to contribute $500,000 to send the elephants to a California sanctuary if others could raise matching funds.

This week, Tucson zoo officials reversed course, announcing that Connie and Shaba could both move to San Diego, the Daily Star said. Turns out, San Diego’s Asian elephant herd already has an African member, so Connie and Shaba’s cross-species kinship will fit right in.

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Photo: Some African elephants at San Diego Zoo's Safari Park, shown here in a July photo, are destined for Tucson's Reid Park Zoo. Credit: Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times

Rains drench Houston, cut power; Texas hasn't seen end of drought

 

The Houston area not only had torrential rain, but some locations also had hail, funnel clouds and flash-flood warnings on Monday. The downpour stranded scores of southeast Texas drivers and left thousands without power, but it's unlikely to ease the drought that has plagued Texas for more than a year.

There were up to 4 inches of rain Monday morning in the Houston area as a cold front moving in from the north met warm, moist Gulf air, said Don Oettinger, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.

Some locations got an inch and a half of hail, and several funnel clouds were reported. Severe thunderstorm, tornado and flash-flood warnings were in effect for some areas through Monday afternoon, Oettinger told The Times.

The rain will help farmers and ranchers in the short term, Oettinger said, but it will do little to diminish -- much less halt -- the punishing drought that's taken a toll on crops, livestock and wildlife.

“We’re still overall behind," he said of the state's total rainfall. "Also, when we get real heavy rain like this, a lot of it washes away and doesn’t do a lot of good."

That's especially the case in areas near Austin that experienced massive wildfires last year.

“This type of rain just runs off of that with little ground cover,” said Oettinger, who is based in League City, Texas, about 25 miles south of Houston.

The rain did seem impressive, however. Some residents posted videos of their perilous morning commute on YouTube; another posted footage of "dancing" manhole covers at a metro rail station.

More heavy rain was expected Monday afternoon, with the storm expected to move out of the area overnight, Oettinger said. Another storm is forecast to hit at week's end, he said. More rain may come later this winter.

Ultimately, the storms' combined effect could alleviate the drought. “If we can get a few more systems like this, that will certainly help,” he said.

Last year was the driest year on record in Texas, as well as the second-hottest, according to the National Weather Service. The average total rainfall statewide was 14.89 inches, beating the previous low of 14.99 inches set in 1917, according to the National Weather Service.

The average temperature in Texas last year was 67.2 degrees, just slightly below its warmest year on record: 1921, when the average was 67.5 degrees.

Some areas of the state received rain last month, but about 98% of Texas remained in severe drought last week, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.

The historic drought has killed about a half-billion trees, according to the Texas Forest Service.

Scientists say the drought is also threatening several animal species, including the state's last remaining flock of about 300 whooping cranes, almost half of which make their home southwest of Houston at the coastal Aransas National Wildlife Refuge.

"We're very apprehensive, very concerned, monitoring the population very closely to see what it is the reaction might be," Dan Alonso, manager of the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge, told the Associated Press. 

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Video: Commuting was more difficult than usual in some parts of Texas on Monday. Credit: YouTube

In Las Vegas, MGM Grand casino to retire its lions

The MGM Grand lions were once as prized on the Las Vegas Strip as a visit from Paris Hilton -– sightings of either one provided tourists with an only-in-Vegas moment. The few dozen lions were probably as pampered as the wealthy socialite, and they arguably worked more frequently.

The lions lived on an 8.5-acre ranch named The Cat House -- not to be confused with Cathouse, a nightclub at the Luxor hotel  -- where they snacked on horse leg bones and steaks and were trained as cubs to tolerate their own version of paparazzi. Some were said to be descendants of Leo, the original Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer lion.

At least once a week since 1999, the lions were loaded into transport cages and driven to the Strip, where their golden manes were shampooed and blow-dried before their star turn. They spent hours in a $9-million, 5,000-square-foot glass habitat, so enamored with the attention that it was sometimes hard to get them to leave.

The animals even had a trust fund of sorts, a 2008 Times story said. MGM Grand managed a 401(k) for them, which would pay for food and trainers if their owner, Keith Evans, no longer could. A few years ago, the account held $1.6 million.

But time passes and tastes change. Like Hilton, the lions have fallen out of favor in Las Vegas (though it had nothing to do with cocaine possession and anemic TV ratings).

The lion habitat will permanently close Jan. 31, the Las Vegas Sun reported Wednesday. A spokeswoman for MGM Resorts International, which owns the hotel, said the closure is part of “significant changes” planned for the massive property, which has a giant lion statue on Las Vegas Boulevard.

MGM Resorts, along with other major casino companies, remains financially bruised from the recession, though in recent months tourism here has somewhat steadied. “The lion is the hotel’s logo,” owner Evans told the Sun, “but times change I guess, and we’re a free show.”

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Photo: Tourists catch a big cat resting in the soundproof lion habitat at the MGM Grand hotel-casino. Credit: Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times

Winter storm drops snow, sleet on Southwest

A powerful winter storm dumped heavy snow across sections of the Southwest and Great Plains on Monday, stranding motorists in New Mexico and Oklahoma and prompting blizzard warnings in Texas two days before the official start of winter.

Forecasters warned late Monday that up to 18 inches of snow was expected across the region as the storm traveled toward the Texas Panhandle and parts of Kansas and Colorado.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry announced late Monday that he had activated state military personnel and equipment ahead of the storm as a precautionary measure to protect Panhandle roads and communities. 

“I urge Texans in the path of this winter storm to remain cautious and heed warnings from local officials as this severe winter storm may create dangerous driving conditions for holiday travel,” Perry said in a statement. “We will continue to closely monitor this storm to ensure state resources are available to assist impacted communities.”

The National Weather Service issued a blizzard warning for several Texas counties, with up to 6  inches of snow expected and wind gusts up to 50 mph. 

Although the storm could make roads hazardous for holiday travelers, weather experts noted that in bone-dry Texas, farmers and ranchers were thankful for the moisture.

The Texas drought, which has lasted more than a year, forced many ranchers to sell their cattle or send them to leased land in Nebraska, Wyoming and other states where pastures are still green.

Those that remain in West Texas often rely on a diet of winter wheat, which grows like a green carpet, low to the ground.

Snow sits atop the wheat, allowing it to flourish, said Tabatha Seymore, observing program leader for the National Weather Service in Amarillo, who spoke with The Times on Monday.

“They look for these good snows, all this moisture we’re getting, to sit on the ground and keep it wet,” Seymore said of farmers and ranchers. “The more snow we have on it, the better it grows. It’s a lifesaver for the cattle industry here to have this.”

By late Monday, she said, Amarillo was already seeing rain, snow and sleet as the temperature dropped to 35 degrees, although the snow had yet to stick.

“We’re waiting for it to turn over here and see some accumulations,” Seymore said.

About 120 miles to the northwest in Texline, along the New Mexico border, about 6 inches of snow had fallen, she said, while Dalhart, about 85 miles northwest, had received 2 to 4 inches, with winds gusting up to 45 mph.

Seymore said officials in the Oklahoma Panhandle were dealing with numerous accidents and had to close a few highways because of snowy conditions.

She said the storm, which originated in Southern California and drew moisture from the Gulf of Mexico, is expected to blow over by morning. Another, weaker storm system is expected in the region later this week.

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Photo: Traffic heads slowly south on I-25 in Santa Fe on Monday as snow accumulates. Credit: Dean Hanson/Albuquerque Journal