Search for any news on Easter and you’ll find some pretty amazing stories! The following is a collection of my favorites.
Easter Lilies Poisonous for Your Cat
One of Easter’s prettiest decorations can be deadly for your pet. Easter lilies are poisonous to cats. A cat who eats the lilies can develop kidney failure. Keep the plants where your cat cannot get to them. If your cat does eat them, take it to the veterinarian right away.
Chicks in the Mail (Hint: not the kind that look good in a bikini)
The Humane Society is asking people to not send live animals as Easter presents through the mail.
The rush to move baby chickens and ducks around the country ends up with many of the birds not surviving, WESH 2 News reported.
Nothing seems to say Easter more than baby animals, such as chickens, bunnies and ducks. Unfortunately, too many of the animals never make it to their final destination. The Humane Society said thousands of baby birds, intended as Easter presents, die in the mail across the U.S. and that sending any living thing through the mail can be risky.
"When you’re shipping a lot of chickens, baby chicks particularly, you’re going to end up with some loss when they get there," said Mary Beth Lake, of Seminole County Animal Services.
Still, there are many places around Central Florida where you can buy baby ducks and chicks. But the people at Hedrick Feed Store recommend you don’t if you’re just looking for a pet.
"You have to have a place to have them, you have to be responsible enough to feed and water them every day. It’s not something you can just jump into and not know much about," Alex Headrick said.
There are only a few bunnies right now at Animal Services in Seminole County. But every year after Easter, they come flooding in.
"Most animals we get are from people who didn’t realize how much work a pet would be," Lake said.
She said she has better advice for people looking for Easter presents.
"Buy the big chocolate bunnies. They really are tasty," she said.
A spokeswoman for the postal service in Central Florida said she hasn’t heard of any incidents of dead chicks in the area, but said it never hurts to take every precaution possible.
news.yahoo.com
Don’t Mess with the Bunny!
At 2:30 on Easter Sunday morning. a man was rushed into the emergency room with a gunshot wound in his abdomen. My friend had the opportunity to talk with the victim on Easter afternoon following late-night surgery.
The patient had been in a bar most of Saturday night enjoying way too much of Kentucky’s finest distilled beverage. Because it was the night before Easter, the bar was having a theme event.
The waitresses were all attired like bunnies, an idea taken from a men’s magazine. The women wore rabbit ears, cottontails and apparently not much else.
The fellow enjoyed the evening so much, he decided to take a bunny home with him. Her boyfriend objected. A fight ensued and the poor man got a bullet from the bunny’s boyfriend.
It’s just not a good idea to mess around with the Easter Bunny!
goupstate.com
A man leaped into a lion’s den at the Taipei Zoo on Wednesday to try to convert the king of beasts to
Christianity, but was bitten in the leg for his efforts.
“Jesus will save you!” shouted the 46-year-old man at two African lions lounging under a tree a few meters away.
“Come bite me!” he said with both hands raised, television footage showed.
One of the lions, a large male with a shaggy mane, bit the man in his right leg before zoo workers drove it off with water hoses and tranquilizer guns.
Newspapers said that the lions had been fed earlier in the day, otherwise the man might have been more seriously hurt … or worse.
Reuters.com
Homeless Bunnies
If you’re planning to surprise your child with a live bunny this Easter, Suzanne Trayhan has a message for you: Buy a chocolate one instead.
Bunnies are an obsession for Trayhan. The 45-year-old software engineer has founded a rescue service for homeless rabbits, the Woburn, Mass.-based House Rabbit Network. The group runs a website and Internet chat room and publishes a newsletter, Rabbit Tracks.
Trayhan owns six rabbits, which she has given names like Hamilton and Abby and Jake. They reside in neat wire-frame crates, a rabbit condo, stacked against her living room wall.
Another 15 or so "foster" bunnies are quartered in her cellar, awaiting adoption.
"People love dogs, people like cats, I’m a bunny person," she said.
It is not easy being a bunny person around Easter. At no other time are bunnies so popular. Parents buy the diminutive animals figuring they will make cuddlesome pets and require no more work than a potted plant.
But within weeks, or days, many learn that keeping a rabbit can be as time-consuming as raising a cat or dog. Lacking the inclination to keep the new pet, families surrender them by the hundreds.
In reaction to this, Trayhan’s group is promoting chocolate rabbits or stuffed animals as alternatives to the real thing.
"People see a cute, adorable bunny in a cage and without thinking say: ‘Let’s get one. The kids will love it. How much work can a bunny rabbit be?’ " said Trayhan.
For starters, bunnies must be fed regularly, not just carrots but fresh hay, leafy greens, and alfalfa pellets. Their cages have to be cleaned. Bunnies should be litter-box trained, not to mention spayed or neutered. Exercise – daily romps around the house – are critical to keeping them fit. And, contrary to popular belief, most bunnies hate being picked up or cuddled. Some will actually nip grabby fingers with their sharp teeth.
Usually a month or so after Easter, which is on April 16 this year, addled owners looking to unload their rabbits will start calling the Methuen chapter of the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, which, in this region, receives the bulk of surrendered rabbits.
Michael Keiley, manager of the animal care and adoption center at the MSPCA Nevins Farm shelter, said the shelter took in 279 rabbits in 2005, an increase from 191 in 2004. The MSPCA took in 313 rabbits in 2001, one of the highest years on record.
Rabbits are distributed to shelters within the MSPCA network, to rabbit rescue groups, or to families looking to adopt. But not every rabbit finds a new home.
"By early summer we get swamped," said Keiley. "We do our best to place them all, but sometimes we just get overwhelmed. We have to euthanize some. It’s a tragic outcome."
By Alexandra Reid
azcentral.com
Investors Hold Back for Easter
The Nikkei average rose 0.20 percent on Friday, helped by a rise in Sumitomo Realty & Development Co. after a brokerage started coverage with a positive rating, while Fast Retailing Co. Ltd. gained after lifting its profit forecast.
Shares of consumer finance firms slid after a newspaper said Japan’s financial regulator would punish industry leader Aiful Corp. for coercive loan collection methods.
After the close of trade, Japan’s Financial Services Agency ordered the firm to suspend business at all its 1,700 outlets for three days as a sanction. [nT341470]
Trade was slower, with many investors holding back due to the Easter holiday weekend in foreign markets and Japan’s coming earnings season, analysts said.
"Investors want to see the forecasts for the current fiscal year. They want to see what kind of earnings growth companies are expecting," said Toru Otsuka, deputy general manager of investor information at Mizuho Investors Securities.
"Investors are also holding back because of Easter," he said. Many overseas markets are closed for Good Friday.
The Nikkei <.N225> finished up 34.67 points at 17,233.82. The benchmark booked its first weekly loss for the first time in six weeks, declining 1.9 percent. The broader TOPIX index <.TOPX> ended up 0.02 percent at 1,744.07.
Shares of Sumitomo Realty & Development gained 5.1 percent to 3,090 yen after brokerage JP Morgan Securities began coverage of it and three other property firms with an "overweight" rating.
The brokerage said Japan’s real estate market is looking more capable of steady, sustainable growth.
Fast Retailing, operator of Uniqlo casual-clothing stores, rose 1.2 percent to 11,490 yen after it lifted its full-year forecast to above market expectations.
Shares in Aiful ended the day untraded, hit by a flood of sell orders at 7,200 yen, and down by their daily limit of 1,000 yen.
Rivals Takefuji Corp. Acom Co. Ltd. both declined, with Takefuji falling 3 percent to 7,550 yen and Acom losing 3.9 percent to 6,860 yen.
By David Dolan
Reuters.com
