Don't rescue somebody when there's an emergency. Let the professionals handle it later, if the victim's still alive then.

This kind of thing just makes my blood boil! Terrific job by Snodgrass (the rafting guide & rescuer), and thank goodness for Bradford (the outfitter) having a backbone and standing up for his man!

The Monster Boar of Alabama

Oh. My. Goodness.

An 11-year-old boy killed this boar with nine shots from a .50-cal pistol. It weighs 1,060 lbs., and it measures 9' 4" long! For goodness' sake, look at the photo--the thing is bigger than any bear I've seen in the smokies! In fact, I think the largest bear killed in the Smokies was something over 400 lbs., so in sheer mass, this boar is over twice its size. The polar bears I saw at the zoo recently will grow to 1,500 lbs., half again as large as this. So this thing is the size of a juvenile polar bear, and they're the biggest land carnivores, period.

I'm trying to imagine this creature roaming through the forests. Alabama has some pretty dense undergrowth, and surely this hog didn't find many clear paths it could fit through. On the other hand, at that size, it just trampled anything in its way!

Big Foot as "endangered species"?

That's what a Canadian Member of Parliament wants his country to declare. According to the petition he circulated (and got 500 constituents' signatures),

"The debate over their (Bigfoot's) existence is moot in the circumstance of their tenuous hold on merely existing. Therefore, the petitioners request the House of Commons to establish immediate, comprehensive legislation to affect immediate protection of Bigfoot."

Well, that does have a certain logic to it...if he goes extinct, it won't matter if he existed to begin with... Ummm...

Never say the Canadian Parliament doesn't provide entertainment for us.