Weird news - Alligator breaks into Florida home

Florida is known as the alligator state, with a large number of alligator occurrences happening there. There are cases of alligators being found in pools, on roads, in gardens, and so on. There are reports of alligator encounters in lakes and other waterways, even though the reported encounters would be far less than the cases where alligators and humans share the same waterway. There are alligator trappers who remain busy, catching these alligators wherever they come into contact with humans and take them to the wild or to alligator farms. These would be needed because of incidents like this where an alligator climbed inside a house through a window and then proceeded to do some wrecking before it was caught (link to article):

A late-night intruder at her home woke up a woman on Friday - but it was no ordinary burglar that she found when she went to investigate. Mary Wischhusen, 77, found a huge alligator in the kitchen of her Clearwater, Florida home when she heard a loud crash on the early hours of Friday morning. According to the official City Of Clearwater Twitter account, the alligator had managed to break into her home through some low window in the kitchen. "I had this beautiful face staring at me as though he belonged there," Ms Wischhusen recalled to Spectrum News. "He was just lying there. It's like he made it all the way through the kitchen and he thought he was so smart," she said. Ms Wischhusen then went back to her bedroom after finding the reptile and called 911. A trapper was then sent to her home to remove the alligator, that had by then managed to shatter the windows, put several holes in the wall, dent the fridge, damage some furniture, and raid Ms Wischhusen's wine collection, reports Spectrum News.

Shopping - how about adopting a snake

With the conflict between man and animal getting more intense as man enters more and more into the habitat of wild animals, there is greater contact with wild animals and that can literally scare people, and it is right of people to get scared when they have such encounters, since wild animals can be unpredictable and can badly injure or kill you depending on the circumstances. For example, if you come across a 12 feet long snake while searching for a shopping basket, the snake could be venomous or non-venomous, could be aggressive or could be scared of people; most people are not expert enough to figure out. The right thing to do is to call experts such as happened in this case (link to article):

A cart attendant at a Walmart outlet in Texas received a huge scare when he found a large snake in a shopping cart. The employee was collecting shopping carts from the supermarket's return area when he saw the snake. His "loud scream" drew the attention of a cop standing on the opposite side of the parking lot, the Northeast Police Department said in a Facebook post. According to the post, the snake was identified as a nonvenomous rat snake. Found entangled between two shopping carts, it was removed with the help of a man whom the police identified as a "snake charmer" - John Heckaman.

Weird news - Rhino poachers and death by lions

Rhinos are big wild animals, who are unfortunately endangered because of their horns, which are supposed to have medical powers, especially aphrodisiac powers and is much sought over, even though trade in the horn is illegal the world over. Poachers, because of the money power of the trade, can be more powerful than the defenders of the animals, and are not bound by the same set of laws and rules.
Over a period of time, there has been a realization that it is not in the interest of humanity to keep on destroying animal species, and there has been more efforts towards ensuring the protection of these animals, who are hunted just because of money. However, once in a while, there are a set of circumstances that protect these hapless from poachers, and even though the death of these poachers is not something to be gloated over, there is a sense of irony that these poachers came to kill wild animals and were instead killed by ultra-predators, the king of the wilderness (link to article):

At least three suspected poachers who were apparently hunting for rhinos have been mauled to death and eaten by lions on a game reserve in South Africa, the owner said on Thursday. The men entered the Sibuya Game Reserve on the southeast coast armed with a high-powered rifle and an axe in the early hours of Monday and were found dismembered the following day. "They strayed into a pride of lions -- it's a big pride so they didn't have too much time," reserve owner Nick Fox, 60, told AFP. "We're not sure how many there were -- there's not much left of them.

Weird news - Keeping a crocodile in the basement

People have a fascination with wild animals, especially those who can pose a risk to the life of human beings, there is a certain kind of fatalistic attraction to such kind of animals. So you find people rearing snakes (even large ones such as Burmese pythons which can be incredibly powerful), or even large cats such lions or tigers or leopards (although the number of these have reduced significantly with more laws against domestic possession of such animals). However, once in a while you find stories of people who keep dangerous animals at home, even though it is totally prohibited in most countries.
In this case, when police officers were looking for a person who was suspected of illegal arms trafficking and searched his home, they found, surprisingly a large crocodile in the basement. Such a crocodile can be very unpredictable and dangerous, not only for the owner but for others in the vicinity as well (link to article):

Pictures released by police showed the animal sitting in the dark, in a shallow muddy pool. Daytime temperatures in Saint Petersburg hovered around minus seven degrees Celsius (19 Fahrenheit), far below the preferred climate for the species. Pictures released by police showed the animal sitting in the dark, in a shallow muddy pool. Daytime temperatures in Saint Petersburg hovered around minus seven degrees Celsius (19 Fahrenheit), far below the preferred climate for the species.

Weird news - Sea Lion pulls girl into the water in Canada

No matter how cute some animals look, they are still wild animals, and unpredictable in terms of their actions, different from how humans tend to think of in terms of predictable actions. Sometimes the antics of wild animals seem very cute, but one has to remember that they are in fact wild animals and one has to be careful. Consider the following case where people flocked to see a sea lion which was very close to land. Children are even more attracted to them, having seen them in cute videos and performances where their performances are scripted and the audience is far away. However, in this case, the sea lion actually grabbed the girl and pulled her into the water and it was quick action which got her back to the land with some bite marks but otherwise safe (link to article):

At one point, the sea lion lunges within inches of the little girl's face. It seems like a friendly move, and the girl cackles with delight. That glee turns to terror a few seconds later, when the seal lunges again -- grabbing the girl and yanking her backwards into the water. A man, who Fujiwara thinks was a relative, jumps in after her and bystanders pull them to safety. "After being pulled back onto the dock, the family quickly walked away from the area without saying much," Fujiwara said. "They were probably very shaken up and just wanted to get away from the sea lion as fast as possible."

Weird news - Man bites and kills snakes in revenge after snake bit him

In areas that have forests or green land nearby and the temperature is more tropical, there are snakes to be found. And given the increased presence of humans in such areas (and especially with activities such as agriculture where there is a lot of disturbance of the ground), there is bound to be more interaction between humans and snake. And when these snakes are poisonous, when the snake feels threatened by some activity of the human, snake bites happen, which in turn can be dangerous. These cause a large number of people to die by snake bite in such regions, especially when these regions can be away from medical facilities that can provide the anti-venom.
But there are far fewer cases of humans attacking the snake after the snake has bit, such as in this case where the farmer who was bit by the snake (a non-poisonous one) got angry and got after the snake, biting it to death (which is not at all a common reaction after being bit by a snake) (link to article):

A Nepalese farmer who was bitten by a venomous snake took revenge by sinking his teeth into the reptile and killing it, police said on Thursday. Mohamed Salmo Miya was farming near his village 200 kilometres (125 miles) southeast of Kathmandu when he encountered the deadly common cobra, district police chief Uma Prasad Chatrubedi told AFP. "A farmer in Bardanga village has killed a white cobra with his teeth out of anger," he said. "The snake bit him while he was working in his paddy field on Tuesday evening and the man chased it and killed it."

Weird news - Man jumps into tiger enclosure in zoo, escapes with injuries

If you see programs about wildlife or see movies where wild animals are involved, you will understand the sheer power of these animals. They can be very dangerous, and their instincts are not the same as that of humans - which means that they can attack you for reasons that seem natural to them, but which may be dangerous to you. Which is why people are advised to be careful when they are near wild animals, and when they are in the zoo, there are enough protection measures to prevent people from getting close to these wild animals.
However, you cannot make everything fail safe, and there have been cases where people have climbed over protective measures and entered the cages of animals such as bears, tigers, lions, etc, and have been mauled, and sometimes have died. So, it is hard to understand the motives of this person who made an effort to jump into the enclosure from a monorail that moves over the zoo at tree height (link to article):

A man was mauled by a 400-pound tiger after leaping from a moving monorail train and plummeting over a protective fence at the Bronx Zoo, authorities said. The man was alone with the tiger for about 10 minutes Friday before he was rescued by zoo officials, who used a fire extinguisher to chase it away. He suffered bites and punctures on his arms, legs, shoulders and back and broke an arm and a leg. The tiger mauling happened at around 3 p.m. in the Wild Asia exhibit, where a train with open sides takes visitors over the Bronx River and through a forest, where they glide along the top edge of a fence past elephants, deer and a tiger enclosure.

The man was lucky to have escaped with whatever injuries he suffered.