WebClawer: 22 dogs rescued from car, seal scared of fish, a soft drink made from cow urine?

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America’s biggest dog show may be over, but animals are still making headlines:

• Authorities in Texas seized 20 dogs and two puppies that were all found crammed into a station wagon with their owner. When they tried to serve the owner with a warrant, the reportedly incoherent woman locked the car doors and refused to come out. The dogs were taken to a shelter until a hearing, scheduled for this month, to determine their custody. ‘The car was soaked with urine and covered in feces. The ammonia level in the vehicle was 23 parts per million even after the doors had been opened for several minutes. As a frame of reference, humans start experiencing health issues at 12 parts per million,’ said Courtney Stevens of the SPCA of Texas. The woman does not face charges, and the SPCA said it had contacted Adult Protective Services about her. Associated Press

• A 5-week-old seal pup who became separated from her mother and was rescued from a beach in Norfolk, England, stumped her caregivers at the Hunstanton Sea Life Sanctuary with an odd phobia: herring. Animal care experts were unable to persuade her to eat the fish, and after two weeks without eating they were forced to do the next best thing: namely, blending special ‘herring smoothies’ and feeding them to her through a tube. ‘It’s the first time we’ve ever come across a herring phobia and it’s really quite unusual as all the seals get fed on herring,’ said Matthew Fuller of Hunstanton. Fortunately, the seal has begun to show interest in fish, and the sanctuary hopes to release her back into the wild when she reaches her target weight of 55 pounds. Telegraph

• The parents of a 3-year-old Las Vegas boy who was attacked by an 18-foot pet python have been arrested on felony child neglect, abuse and endangerment charges. The snake coiled around the boy and had begun to constrict when the mother, 25-year-old Melissa Melendrez, intervened, stabbing it more than a dozen times with a kitchen knife. The snake was later euthanized. Both parents are scheduled to appear in court Thursday. Associated Press

• A new soft drink is coming to India, and we think we’d prefer plain old 7-Up. ‘Gau jai,’ as the drink will be called, is Sanskrit for ‘cow water’ and is made from a blend of cow urine and medicinal and ayurvedic herbs. The drink’s developers say it’s now in a testing phase and they expect it to be available to the public by year’s end. ‘Don’t worry, it won’t smell like urine and will be tasty too,’ said Om Prakash, the head of the Cow Protection Department of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), which developed the drink. ‘Its unique selling point will be that it’s going to be very healthy. It won’t be like carbonated drinks and will be devoid of any toxins.’ Daily Mail

-- Lindsay Barnett

Photo: The car in which 22 dogs were found in Pottsboro, Texas. Credit: Associated Press