Archive for the ‘Animal’ Category

Alligators

Yikes! A trailer carrying 26 alligator carcasses to a processing plant overturned on a Fort Lauderdale highway (year unknown). The carcasses, which weighed about 10,000 pounds were put on a flatbed truck and taken to the processing plant.

Who knew alligators were being hauled around the country? Alligator farming is big business in Florida, Texas and Louisiana, producing about 45,000 hides a year. 6-7 foot hides sell for as much as $300. The market for alligator meat also produces about 300,000 pounds a year.

Alligators should not be confused with crocodiles, which are a completely different animal. One way to tell the difference is that alligators teeth do not show when their mouth is closed, crocodiles do.

 

 

Piglets

On July 30, 2009 a semi truck overturned in Pratt, Kansas, killing 500-600 piglets on their way to Iowa and injuring the driver. The truck was carrying 2,350 piglets total.

The driver made a turn, and his load shifted, causing the truck to flip over onto the passenger side. The driver was wearing a seat belt and was hospitalized.

For the next several hours the road was closed and pigs were screaming as they were rescued. Local farmers brought empty trialers to transfer the pigs into. Workers purchased some wire fencing to make pens for the pigs and holes were cut in the top of the trailer to help get them out.

Once the top half of the rig was empty, they were able to get the truck back upright and they could unload the rest of the piglets from the side and back doors of the trailer.

Some of the more badly injured pigs were euthanized. Once all the live pigs were removed and transported, volunteers removed hundreds of dead pigs from the trailer. They were taken to be “buried” in the Pratt County Landfill. Special permission was needed from the Kansas Dept. of Health & Environment.

 

The Pratt Tribune Photos Gale Rose

Pig Food

Pig Food

It’s rare that we get live footage of a truck spill in action. Even rarer when it’s this disgusting. Rarer still when it’s this funny.

Justin Rowlatt, known as The Ethical Man, flew to Las Vegas to see how a pig farm feeds their pigs with leftovers from the city’s restaurants.

Unfortunately, it didn’t occur to him to be a bit more careful when he stopped his truck full of slop just as he reached the cameraman.

He was wearing a nice suit too! (Why?)

 


Ecological Disaster! Ethical Man Gets Covered… by KareenMekhi
 

BBC

Whale Guts

Thar She Blows! (OK, that was too easy).

A 56-foot, 60-ton sperm whale died on a beach in Taiwan in January, 2004. Researchers wanted the carcass to perform an autopsy and for research, so they loaded the whale onto a tractor-trailer and set out through the city of Tainan, heading for the Shi-Tsau Natural Preserve. It took 13 hours, three cranes and 50 workers to get the whale loaded on the truck. Unfortunately, on the way through the city, gasses built up to a critical level in the whale and it exploded, spewing whale guts in the street, on the cars and over pedestrians. According to witnesses, the smell was pretty bad. Residents and shop owners put on masks and tried to clean up the mess. Eventually the whale continued its journey to the research center.

When I sent this picture to my friend, Richard, he said “…I initially thought a motorcyclist had exploded. But then I noticed the subtle background-whale”

 

 

 

Re: MSNBC and others

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