Minnesota — One truck carried millions of bees, and firefighters fought them with hoses to reach the victims.

Two cars had been crushed, one person was dead, another was fatally injured, and if that wasn’t enough, emergency crews had to make it through a cloud of bees to reach the victims.

Two semitrailer trucks — one carrying millions of bees — and two cars collided on Interstate 35 in Lakeville late Monday morning, a crash that closed the northbound lanes along a 5-mile stretch of the interstate between County Road 2 and County Road 70 for several hours.

All through the sweltering afternoon, after the badly injured driver was airlifted to a hospital, emergency personnel used fire hoses to battle thousands of bees that escaped from the beehives and swarmed the area.

“I saw this big black cloud,” said Lakeville Fire Chief Scott Nelson, one of the first people on the scene. “I opened up my door and got stung in the face by a couple of bees.”

He told other firefighters to come in full gear, face masks on, for protection. “We’re all taking a sting here or a sting there,” Nelson said as he stood near the scene.

Lt. Eric Roeske of the Minnesota State Patrol said investigators are uncertain what caused the crash, which left two cars, a Chevrolet Lumina and a Pontiac Bonneville, crumpled between the two trucks.

Washington State — A Whatcom County man’s friendship and aggressive support for a man convicted in the infamous Enumclaw horse-sex case led to his arrest this week for allegedly operating a bestiality farm just south of the Canadian border, federal prosecutors said Friday.

Douglas Spink, 39, a one-time dot.com millionaire, convicted drug smuggler and horse trainer, was quietly living on rural property south of Sumas when he connected with James Tait, who was in a Tennessee jail on a bestiality charge.

Tait had earlier been convicted of trespassing in 2005 in the Enumclaw case, in which a Gig Harbor man died after having sex with a horse.

The two men’s communications set in motion an investigation that resulted in Spink’s arrest Wednesday at the Sumas farm for suspicion of violating his federal probation for drug smuggling. Federal prosecutors and Whatcom County sheriff’s officials say Spink also allowed people to come to the farm and have sex with animals.

He was “promoting tourism of this nature for bestiality,” Whatcom County Sheriff Bill Elfo said Friday.

When county deputies and federal investigators searched the property they found videotapes that included images of a man, who was visiting the property, having sex with several large-breed dogs.

The man, a 51-year-old British national, was arrested for investigation of four counts of bestiality, Elfo said. He is being held in the Whatcom County Jail in lieu of $150,000, Elfo said.

On Wednesday, authorities took several animals, including horses and large-breed dogs, found on Spink’s property into protective custody, Elfo said. Several mice were euthanized, he added. “At this point, we don’t know how many people visited this location or how many engaged in illegal conduct,” the sheriff said. “We’ll see as the federal investigation unfolds.”

The property, Exitpoint Stallions, is reportedly owned by Spink’s mother.

Spink appeared Friday in U.S. District Court in Seattle, where he was ordered held until an April 30 detention hearing.

“These are just allegations,” Spink’s attorney, Howard Phillips, said after the hearing. “My client said he has not been engaging in bestiality at all.”

How and why Spink and Tait came to know one another is unclear, but in court Friday federal prosecutors explained how authorities were led to Spink.

During the phone calls between Tait and Spink, the two men talked about their similar views on animals and bestiality, authorities said.

Spink was so concerned about Tait’s arrest in Tennessee for bestiality that Spink called his friend’s lawyers and even pretended to be an attorney himself, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Susan Roe. The phone calls from Spink came to the attention of police in Maury County, Tenn., who eventually learned that Spink was not a lawyer but was on federal probation on the drug-smuggling conviction, authorities said.

Maury County Detective Terry Chandler contacted U.S. Probation in Seattle, authorities said. Tennessee authorities turned over recorded jail phone calls between Spink and Tait to authorities building a case here.

Tait, 58, pleaded guilty in January in Tennessee to engaging in sexual activity with animals and was released on probation. As part of his own probation, Spink was forbidden from talking with other felons, Roe said.

Phillips, Spink’s attorney, concedes that the two men conversed, but said that it was before Tait was convicted of the felony.

If convicted of the probation violation, Spink faces up to five years in prison, Roe said.

Spink is a former Portland businessman who prospered as a mergers-and-acquisitions entrepreneur during the height of the technology boom, but went bankrupt in 2002, according to The Oregonian. He has long trained horses, competed in jumping, and raised dogs, his lawyer said on Friday.

In 2005, Spink was arrested in Monroe after authorities found 371 pounds of cocaine in his car. Authorities said Spink was a drug runner for smuggler Robert Kesling, who once lived in Woodinville.

Spink was sentenced to about three years in federal prison after he cooperated with the government’s investigation into two Seattle-area attorneys who were implicated in the drug-smuggling operation.

James L. White, a criminal-defense attorney and part-time Edmonds Municipal Court judge, and A. Mark Vanderveen, of Shoreline, were sentenced to federal prison time for accepting money from Kesling. Kesling was sentenced to 17 years in prison.

Spink was released from prison in May 2007.

In the Enumclaw case, a 45-year-old Gig Harbor man died after having sex with a horse on Tait’s rental farm. Authorities charged Tait with trespassing at a neighbor’s farm on the night of the man’s death. Tait’s neighbors told The Seattle Times in 2005 that they didn’t know that people had been sneaking into their barn to have sex with their horses.

Tait was given a one-year suspended sentence.

In 2006, in response to the Enumclaw case, the Washington Legislature made bestiality a Class C felony, punishable by up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

A zebra from the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus escaped his handler and led police on a chase through downtown Atlanta on Thursday afternoon.

The black-and-white striped animal was spotted all over town — in the parking lot near the Richard B. Russell Federal Building, near Centennial Olympic Park, CNN and on the Downtown Connector. He was finally captured on the interstate near the Grady curve. According to witnesses, he was galloping between lanes of traffic on the Downtown Connector before his capture.

The 12-year-old zebra, named Lima, was exercising to prepare for Thursday night’s circus performance at Philips Arena when “something spooked him,” Ringling Brothers spokeswoman Crystal Drake told the Associated Press. The zebra broke away from his trainers and bumped up against a fence before wiggling through an opening and running off, she told the AP.

“We’re not sure what it was that startled him, but we’re looking into that,” Drake told the AP.

Daniel Nance saw a westbound zebra zipping down Alabama Street near MARTA’s Five Points station.

“All of a sudden, a freaking zebra comes running down the street like a car. Five or six police cars were in hot pursuit. And a bunch of officers on foot. But then I got scared, thinking … what else is loose?” a laughing Nance said.

Soon after, a man working with police got a hold of the zebra in the parking lot of the Richard B. Russell Federal Building, said Jonathan Harris, a MARTA worker who was outside the Five Points station taking a break. But only for a moment.

“It just started dragging him,” Harris said.

Minutes before, Prapik Jani saw the animal jogging along Baker Street a half mile away next to Centennial Olympic Park. Jani, who manages the Baja Fresh Mexican Grill, said several of his customers gasped. He looked outside and saw an African creature running down the pavement. “It was wild,” Jani said. “I thought I was seeing things.”

Jani said there were “a bunch” of police on bicycles chasing after the zebra.

Using a combination of reports from AJC staffers and eye-witness accounts, here’s the route the zebra took:

4:37 p.m.

An AJC staffer spotted the zebra on Fairlie Street behind the Atlanta Journal-Constitution building. A circus trainer said the zebra had to have gotten through a hole in the gate.

The zebra walked down along a ramp on Spring Street and went up to Marietta Street.

It then ran to Luckie Street and over to Broad Street.

From Broad Street, the zebra ran up through the Five Points area and was near the Five Points MARTA station.

Nance and Harris saw the zebra run along Alabama Street — toward the circus animal holding area, which is across the street from the CNN Center.

5:00 p.m.

The zebra was contained in the parking lot by the Richard B. Russell Federal Building, near the CNN Center and Philips Arena.

Trainers were walking with the zebra when it started to charge, dragging one of the trainers momentarily before it took off again, running across the railroad tracks and through a gate. One of the trainers was holding on to the zebra as it ran through the gate.

The zebra ran through the parking lot and down through the tunnel between Philips Arena and the CNN center.

It then came out onto Baker Street and turned left, running onto Williams Street. It followed the ramp onto the downtown Connector.

The zebra was cornered on the downtown connector just before the Martin Luther King Jr. exit.

Police cruisers blocked off all southbound lanes of Interstate 75 and were able to herd the zebra over to the right shoulder and off an entrance ramp, where his trainer was on hand to capture and soothe him, Drake told the AP.

“He obviously was excited, but he was in good shape,” Drake told the AP. “His handler calmed him down.”

The animal suffered cuts on his hooves from his long run, Drake said. The show’s vet was examining him, but Drake said he would likely perform as scheduled.

This isn’t the first time a zebra has been out on the highway in recent years. A young zebra was found stranded and injured on I-75 in Butts County in April 2008. Then a zebra who usually lives on a farm across from Oxford College’s Newton County campus was zebra-napped and deposited inside the college’s Seney Hall as part of a prank.

Zebras’ stripes stick out on the highway or on campus, but they help them hide among tall grasses in Africa, especially from lions, the color-blind predator.

“Each zebra has an individual stripe pattern, similar to a person, which has its own unique fingerprint, ” Lisa Smith, Zoo Atlanta’s curator of large mammals, told the AJC in 2008.

There was a THIRD zebra story. Also in April of 2008. Apparently we love our zebras here.

U.S. figure skater Johnny Weir says he received threats from anti-fur activists that made him fear for his safety, causing him to scrub any plans to stay at a hotel while in Vancouver for the Olympics.

“I felt very threatened,” he said Saturday. “I’m not allowed to say how everything got through, but my agent got letters and faxes and e-mails. I got letters at the ice rink, somebody found my phone number.

“All these crazy fur people. Security-wise, to stay in a hotel would be very difficult. There have been threats against me. I didn’t want to get hurt.”

Weir is sharing a suite with U.S. ice dancer Tanith Belbin in the Olympic village. The longtime friends have their own bedrooms and bathrooms.

Belbin won Olympic silver in 2006 with partner Ben Agosto. A three-time national champion, Weir, who finished fifth in Torino, was third at this year’s nationals to gain the final spot on the U.S. team.

The men’s short program is Tuesday with the free skate set for Thursday.

“I’m just an easy person to pick on because I like fur,” he said. “It’s easy to put your case against an athlete who is going to the Olympics. It’s a very good, easy thing for these activists.

“It’s a very scary thing. I’m a figure skater, I’m not some huge politician who gets these things all the time.”

Weir was criticized by animal-rights activists after he donned a costume in nationals with white fox fur on the shoulder. He said after the event that he would wear faux fur in the Games, but has since changed his mind.

“It was not because I was pressured to change it, but because I don’t like faux fur,” Weir explained. “I didn’t change the costume, I’m just switching back to another costume.”

A German reptile collector has been jailed for 14 weeks and must pay a 5,000 New Zealand dollar ($3,540) fine for plundering New Zealand’s wild gecko and skink populations, a judge has ruled.

Hans Kurt Kubus, 58, is to be deported to Germany as soon as he is released from prison, Judge Colin Doherty ordered Tuesday.

Kubus was caught by wildlife officials at Christchurch International Airport on South Island in December, about to board an overseas flight with 44 geckos and skinks in a hand-sewn package concealed in his underwear.

He admitted trading in exploited species without a permit and hunting absolutely protected wildlife without authority, pleading guilty to two charges under the Wildlife Act and five under the Trade in Endangered Species Act.

Department of Conservation prosecutor Mike Bodie told Christchurch District Court that Kubus could have faced potential maximum penalties of 500,000 dollars and six months in prison.

Bodie told Doherty that the department sought a deterrent sentence for “the most serious case of its kind detected in New Zealand for a decade or more.”

The geckos may have been worth 2,000 euros ($2,800) each on the European market, he noted.

“Internationally, this type of trade is prevalent and is on the increase worldwide and can be lucrative,” he said.

Customs records showed that Kubus had also been to New Zealand in 2001, 2004, 2008, and 2009. In 2008, he had been with a Swiss reptile dealer.

Doherty said Kubus had come to New Zealand and set about poaching the animals in a premeditated way which would have had an impact on particular colonies.

There was a potential for Kubus to end up with far more animals than he could have housed in his own collection and the rest would have been sold.

“I don’t think you necessarily came here to steal to sell, but I am sure the fact that you might have had excess was figured into your thinking,” said the judge, describing the offending as “pretty close to the worst case.”

As punishment for bad grades, a Georgia mother forced her 12-year-old son to kill his pet hamster with a hammer, police said.

The day after he was forced to kill his pet, the child told his teacher, Meriwether County Sheriff Steve Whitlock told the AJC Thursday evening.

The teacher reported the incident to DFCS authorities, who contacted police, Whitlock said. The pet’s death allegedly took place at the family’s Warm Springs home.

On Friday, 38-year-old Lynn Middlebrooks Geter was arrested, Whitlock said. Geter faces one charge each of animal cruelty, child cruelty and battery.

Geter remained in the Meriwether County jail Thursday evening, Whitlock said.

SYDNEY — Two stars of the reality TV show “I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here” have been charged with animal cruelty after allegedly killing and cooking a rat to eat during filming.

Chef Gino D’Acampo who won the viewer-feedback contest series, and actor Stuart Manning were charged after animal welfare activists lodged a complaint about a segment for the British TV program, which was filmed in Australia, the activists and British media reported Sunday.

In a statement to The Associated Press, New South Wales state police said Sunday that two men, aged 33 and 30, were charged with animal cruelty for acts in connection to the program but did not give names or other details. They have been asked to appear in court to face the charge on Feb. 3. The maximum penalty is three years in prison.

D’Acampo is 33 years old and Manning 30.

The show’s producer, ITV, confirmed in a statement that “the New South Wales RSPCA are currently looking into an incident in which a rat was killed in the camp.”

“The killing of a rat for a performance is not acceptable. The concern is this was done purely for the cameras,” David O’Shannessy of the New South Wales RSPCA told the British Broadcasting Corp.

He said producers were normally required to have animal welfare officers on set when animals were used during filming, but in this case it did not take place.

“I’m a Celebrity” strands C-list celebrities in the Australian jungle, subjects them to a series of icky trials involving spiders and snakes, and allows the public to vote them off the show one by one.

An 11-year-old boy killed a bear at point-blank range last Wednesday night after it wouldn’t leave his family’s porch.

The boy was at his home near Driggs with his younger sisters and after seeing the bear on the front porch and not being able to get it to leave, the boy retrieved a gun and killed the animal.

The family declined to comment and wished to remain anonymous.

Fish and Game Conservation Officer Doug Petersen said the black bear had been a problem in the area near the county transfer station, and he and Fish and Game Officer Lauren Wednt had set up a trap earlier in the week.

“The bear had been hanging around and we got multiple complaint calls,” said Wendt. The bear had been getting into garbage cans and bird feeders in the area.

Petersen said officials may have had to put it down anyway. He said that in situations where the bear has been a problem around humans or threatens human safety, they usually don’t issue citations.

“Human safety is a higher priority,” said Petersen. “We’re concerned with how bears are managed and we want to live in harmony with them.”

The boy and his family are not in any trouble, and Petersen said he issued them a permit to keep the bear. Usually when a bear is put down by Fish and Game they sell the hide at a state auction, Petersen said. Petersen said the family reported the bear Thursday morning. Fish and Game trapped and euthanized another problem black bear about two weeks ago, after the bear reportedly let himself into a home. Petersen said it’s normal for the animals to move from higher elevations this time of year.

“We don’t like to see them down this low,” said Petersen. “But it’s not uncommon.”

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Native Alaskans say a fourth-grader may have become the youngest person to kill a whale, delivering the fatal blow to a 32-foot bowhead during a hands-on hunting lesson from his uncles.

The crew landed the whale last Tuesday as hunters approached the city of Barrow’s annual quota of 22 bowheads.

His uncle and whaling crew captain, Qulliuq Pebley, says 9-year-old Paul Patkotak is the youngest whaler in memory credited with a kill. He says the youngest before Paul was a 15-year-old.

Paul’s father, Ellis Patkotak, describes him as a shy kid who loves snowmobiling, playing the “Rock Band” video game and hunting.

Paul joined his uncle’s crew during the city’s largely unsuccessful spring whaling season. The crew came home empty-handed, but Paul proved himself.

The uncle asked Paul if he wanted to play a bigger role in the fall season. The boy said he did.

“This day we were very, very fortunate,” Pebley said of landing the whale. “I gave him what he asked for because he’s such a hard-working little man.”

Another uncle, Pauyuuraq Brower, first harpooned the whale using a darting gun. The weapon is a harpoon with an apparatus that fires an explosive charge into the whale upon impact.

The initial blow didn’t kill the whale, so Brower used a shoulder-fired rifle to launch a second explosive into it, Pebley said, but that charge did not explode.

“That’s when I told him I wanted Paul to go up front and throw the harpoon in again. Put another bomb into it,” Pebley said.

Paul was given a darting gun with a handle carved from a birch tree. It was about eight feet long and weighed 30 pounds when loaded, Pebley said. Paul, 9, weighs about 75 pounds.

“He’s kind of a little guy but he’s pretty tough for his age,” Pebley said. Brower aimed the harpoon for the boy and told him when and where to throw it.

“Paul did the rest. He threw like he had been doing it for years and years,” Pebley said.

The bomb exploded, killing the whale.

The whole thing took about 10 minutes, Pebley said. Butchering the bowhead lasted another three or four hours, and Paul’s family received hundreds of pounds of meat, his father said.

Paul’s role in the hunt drew fresh attention to Barrow whaling, and subsistence whale hunting inside and outside Alaska.

After photos of Paul and the whale were posted online earlier this week, it was copied to a social-networking site for animal welfare advocates. The story drew dozens of comments from people who called the news “disgusting” and “horrific.” A few defended the traditional hunt, while others wrote personal attacks against the young hunter.

“What a proud little murderer,” wrote one person, adding: “These people can buy their food for the winter at the store.”

More than 300 miles above the Arctic Circle, Barrow is the northernmost town in North America. Most residents are Inupiat natives, according to the state Division of Community and Regional Affairs. Local leaders call whaling a unifying tradition. The borough mayor is a captain himself.

Pebley was aware of the Internet comments.

“For me it’s just like everybody has a right to their own opinion,” he said. “I don’t judge them on their opinion. One of the values I was taught was not to judge people by what they do or say.”

(Ed note: The kid’s already wiser than pretty much most of the rest of humanity.)

A jury this morning found John William Moyer guilty of groping of a woman playing Minnie Mouse at Walt Disney World.

Moyer, 60, of Pennsylvania, was convicted of misdemeanor battery for the June incident this morning.

Judge Wayne Shoemaker imposed the sentence this morning.

“The verdict reinforces the fact that this type of behavior is not acceptable,” said Walt Disney World spokeswoman Zoraya Suarez. Disney officials also banned Moyer from entering any of the company’s resorts, Suarez said.

According to the sentence, Moyer has to write a letter of apology to the victim, Brittney Duncan McGoldrick. He also is under supervised probation for 180 days, must complete 50 hours of community service within four months, pay $1,000 in court costs and submit to a mental evaluation with treatment, if necessary.

Before sentencing, Moyer’s adult son spoke on his behalf.

“He’s a good man,” Emory Moyer said. “He’s a nice guy.”

Emory Moyer also described his father as a man who would never touch a woman inappropriately.

Later, Moyer spoke briefly to the judge.

“I am innocent, I am not guilty of the crimes that I’ve been charged with,” Moyer said.

Moyer has no criminal history and has never received a speeding ticket, he said. This was his first offense.

McGoldrick told prosecutors at the Orange County Courthouse on Monday she had pushed Moyer away from her after the incident.

“My first reaction I just pushed him down. I was doing everything I could to get his hands off my breasts,” Duncan McGoldrick said.

Jurors began their deliberations Monday afternoon.

“We’re just hoping for the only fair and just verdict in this case, which is ‘not guilty’,” said Zahra S. Umansky, Moyer’s attorney.

Moyer had been booked into Orange County Jail on June 7 and was released on $1,000 bail.

MARTIN COUNTY – Martin County Sheriff’s detectives didn’t buy it when a 48-year-old Jensen Beach man claimed that his cat was downloading child pornography on his computer.

Keith R. Griffin was charged Wednesday with 10 counts of possession of child pornography after detectives found more than 1,000 child pornographic images on his computer, according to a news release.

Griffin told detectives he would leave his computer on and his cat would jump on the keyboard.

When he returned, there would be strange material downloaded, the release states.

Griffin was being held in the Martin County Jail in lieu of $250,000 bail.

SAN DIEGO — Talk about adding a late-inning buzz to a ballgame.

Thursday’s game between the Houston Astros and San Diego Padres was delayed for 52 minutes in the top of the ninth inning Thursday when a swarm of bees took over part of left field at Petco Park.

A beekeeper was called the downtown ballpark and sprayed a chair and a ballgirl’s jacket that had attracted the bees.

“The umpires made the right call to stop the game,” Padres president Tom Garfinkel said. “There’s a couple thousand bees there. If they decide to swarm on a person, whether that’s a person, an employer or a fan, we could have a real situation.”

The game was halted at 3:09 p.m. The beekeeper arrived at 3:56 p.m. and the game resumed five minutes later.

After Joe Thatcher’s first pitch to Miguel Tejada with two outs in the ninth, Padres left fielder Kyle Blanks began walking in toward the infield. Second base umpire Mike Reilly walked toward left field to see what was going on.

Within minutes, the rest of the players left the field.

The swarm first appeared along the warning track. Later, fans were cleared out of several sections down the left-field line.

Houston led 6-1 at the time.

Garfinkel said head groundskeeper Luke Yoder had the beekeeper on his speed dial.

A single mega-colony of ants has colonised much of the world, scientists have discovered.

Argentine ants living in vast numbers across Europe, the US and Japan belong to the same interrelated colony, and will refuse to fight one another.

The colony may be the largest of its type ever known for any insect species, and could rival humans in the scale of its world domination.

What’s more, people are unwittingly helping the mega-colony stick together.

Argentine ants (Linepithema humile) were once native to South America. But people have unintentionally introduced the ants to all continents except Antarctica.

These introduced Argentine ants are renowned for forming large colonies, and for becoming a significant pest, attacking native animals and crops.

In Europe, one vast colony of Argentine ants is thought to stretch for 6,000km (3,700 miles) along the Mediterranean coast, while another in the US, known as the ‘Californian large’, extends over 900km (560 miles) along the coast of California. A third huge colony exists on the west coast of Japan.

While ants are usually highly territorial, those living within each super-colony are tolerant of one another, even if they live tens or hundreds of kilometres apart. Each super-colony, however, was thought to be quite distinct.

But it now appears that billions of Argentine ants around the world all actually belong to one single global mega-colony.

Researchers in Japan and Spain led by Eiriki Sunamura of the University of Tokyo found that Argentine ants living in Europe, Japan and California shared a strikingly similar chemical profile of hydrocarbons on their cuticles.

But further experiments revealed the true extent of the insects’ global ambition.

The team selected wild ants from the main European super-colony, from another smaller one called the Catalonian super-colony which lives on the Iberian coast, the Californian super-colony and from the super-colony in west Japan, as well as another in Kobe, Japan.

They then matched up the ants in a series of one-on-one tests to see how aggressive individuals from different colonies would be to one another.

Ants from the smaller super-colonies were always aggressive to one another. So ants from the west coast of Japan fought their rivals from Kobe, while ants from the European super-colony didn’t get on with those from the Iberian colony.

One big family

But whenever ants from the main European and Californian super-colonies and those from the largest colony in Japan came into contact, they acted as if they were old friends.

These ants rubbed antennae with one another and never became aggressive or tried to avoid one another.

In short, they acted as if they all belonged to the same colony, despite living on different continents separated by vast oceans.

The most plausible explanation is that ants from these three super-colonies are indeed family, and are all genetically related, say the researchers. When they come into contact, they recognise each other by the chemical composition of their cuticles.

“The enormous extent of this population is paralleled only by human society,” the researchers write in the journal Insect Sociaux, in which they report their findings.

However, the irony is that it is us who likely created the ant mega-colony by initially transporting the insects around the world, and by continually introducing ants from the three continents to each other, ensuring the mega-colony continues to mingle.

“Humans created this great non-aggressive ant population,” the researchers write.

SARASOTA COUNTY, FL — Sarasota County Deputies have arrested a woman who videotaped herself having sex with two dogs.

Deputies say Caroline Willette videotaped herself having sex with two dogs and watching child pornography with a friend.

The 53-year-old gave a CD with the images to an acquaintance, who turned it over to police. Willette is in Sarasota County Jail and is charged with three counts of possessing child porn.

Willette admitted to detectives that she had sex with the animals in her home and watched young girls perform sex acts on the Internet.

(Ed note: I imagine that’ll be an amusing moment when her fellow inmates finally get around to asking the age old question, “So, what are you in for?”)

A 14-year-old Saginaw boy has been charged with strong-arm robbery and assault in juvenile court after he pushed a woman and broke her cell phone while taking a walk naked with a large white poodle in Hart Township Monday, police say.

Lt. Craig Mast of the Oceana County Sheriff’s Office said a 14-year-old youth walked away from a youth behavioral treatment facility Monday morning, stripped down, and was with a “giant” white poodle when he approached a woman working in her yard just after 11:30 a.m. Monday in the area of Oceana Drive and Lake Road.

“The young naked man approached her with this poodle, and she immediately realized something peculiar,” Mast said.

When the woman asked the boy if he was all right, he told her some statements that didn’t make much sense, Mast said. The boy said his mother had kicked him out of her home in the Saginaw area.

When the woman, 53, of Hart Township, got out her cell phone to call for help for the boy, he assaulted her, pushing her in the upper chest, and took her phone. He fled the scene and broke the phone in half, the sheriff’s office stated.

The woman went to a neighbor’s house and called 911.

Deputies responded to the victim and shortly afterwards they located the boy near Oceana Drive and Lake Road in Hart Township near the American Legion Hall.

Mast said when dispatch gave information about the boy, deputies had an idea of who they were looking for because he had shown up naked along a roadway a few days earlier. He was picked up by a reserve officer and brought back to the placement facility after that incident.

He was taken into protective custody Monday and has since been moved to a more secure facility out of the area.

The boy is being charged with strong-arm robbery and assault and battery as a juvenile through the 10th Circuit Court in Saginaw.

Mast said because the boy is a juvenile he is referred back to his jurisdiction of residence, which is where the incident for his original charges occurred.

The name of the suspect and past charges were not released.

If your kids play interactive video games, like the Nintendo Wii, be on the lookout. The Mid-Missouri Internet Crimes Task Force is warning of predators using games like, “Animal Crossing- City Folk,” to target kids.

Using the game you create a character and create your own town and house. When hooked up to the internet you can talk to anyone across the country. Kids playing the game have no control over what other players might be saying. For example, the character we ran across could be the man in California police are warning about.

“There is no reason an adult should have this game,” says Andy Anderson, Mid-Missouri Internet Crimes Task Force.

Anderson says adults playing “animal crossing” and similar games are likely doing it for the wrong reasons.

You probably have told your kids never to talk to strangers, but when playing, the heart of the game is building relationships with the animals in your town as well as other players. To really reach the next level, the game urges you to exchange letters, gifts, and favors.

Anderson says it is going to take parents paying attention to keep this problem from exploding.

“The equipment is real expensive and we cannot afford to buy all of the systems and do not have the resources either to examine all of the possibilities,” Anderson explains.

(Ed note: It’s all part of the ongoing attempt to constantly keep parents completely terrified that their children will be buttraped at every opportunity.)

This is an update to this story.

A man caught on tape throwing a cat 20 to 30 feet in the air during a break-in has been arrested, Henry County police said.

William Conrad Morse, 38, of Keys Ferry Road in McDonough is charged with the Oct. 11 burglary of the McDonough office of the Georgia Forestry Commission.

Police Capt. Jason Bolton said the burglar found the Forestry Commission cat, Wildfire, inside a shed during the burglary and took it outside. After being thrown into the air, the cat landed on the roof of the building, fell to the concrete and ran away.

A surveillance camera captured the cat-tossing, as well as the burglary and theft of two axes, Bolton said. The cat survived.

During a search of Morse’s house, police found methamphetamine and a .22-caliber rifle, police said. Morse was charged with burglary, cruelty to animals, possession of the drug and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. Morse, who was arrested Friday, is being held in the Henry County Jail.

McDonough, GA — Police are looking for a man they say robbed a McDonough forestry building and then flung a cat into the air as he escaped.

Police in Henry County said they just obtained video from the incident that occurred in October at the Georgia Forestry Commission.

It shows a man stealing two axes from vehicles parked outside the commission building.

The tape also shows the forestry cat, Wildfire, greeting the man. Police say the suspect grabbed the cat and tossed it 30 feet into the air. The cat landed on a roof and then the ground, where it fled, uninjured.

Atlanta’s newest favorite son — Zoo Atlanta’s panda cub — now has a name: Xi Lan (shee-lahn).

In a ceremony marking his 100th day of life, zoo officials revealed the name — which means “Atlanta’s joy” — while about 200 people, braving the sunny, morning chill, cheered with excitement.

“This is indeed a very important birth for this highly endangered species,” said Dennis Kelly, president of the zoo. “The eyes of the world are on Atlanta and Georgia.”

The event was kicked off by children from Atlanta’s Chinese Children Adoption International singing “Panda Mi-Mi,” a song about a panda mother and her cub. A colorful traditional Chinese dragon dance followed at the zoo’s Grand Patio.

Xi Lan, born Aug. 30, was given his name on the 100th day of life as part of Chinese tradition. In the past, high infant mortality in the eastern nation led parents to wait 100 days before naming a child.

While dignitaries from the zoo, city, state and China spoke about him, Xi Lan could be seen asleep in his den, moving around every once in a while. Kelly said he had just eaten.

More than 45,000 votes were cast worldwide for one of the 12 names for Xi Lan, the second cub born to Lun Lun and Yang Yang, Zoo Atlanta’s panda parents. Mei Lan, the panda couple’s first child, was born in September 2006.

“That’s the one I voted for,” Fulton County Commission Lynne Riley said of the winning name. “I voted for Mei Lan, too. I’m two for two on panda names.”

The 12 names were suggested by several individuals and organizations, including radio stations, zoo staff and representatives from China’s Chengdu Research Base Facility, the owners of the pandas.

The Zoo Atlanta board of directors won a private reception for 50 at the zoo as well as an exclusive viewing of the cub because its name — Xi Lan — was chosen. It donated the prize to the Chinese Children Adoption International.

While the event was designed to celebrate Xi Lan’s naming, the political benefits of Atlanta raising a cub was inescapable. Speakers often spoke about the partnership between China and Zoo Atlanta, as well as Delta Air Lines and its Chinese routes.

“The relationship that we have with the Chinese community and the efforts we have made to perpetuate this species is nothing less than spectacular,” said Greg Pridgeon, chief of staff for Mayor Shirley Franklin.

Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle said the zoo and its management of the pandas has helped strengthen the bonds between Georgia and China. Coupled with Delta and state efforts to grow economic ties, Georgia is positioned to make the partnership stronger.

“This is just a fitting tribute to that cooperation and relationship,” he said.

The Chinese seem equally positive.

“We wish Lun Lun would produce more and more babies in the future,” said Xia Zhenglin of the Chinese Research Base.

BEIJING (AP) – A college student in southern China was bitten by a panda after he broke into the bear’s enclosure hoping to get a hug, state media and a park employee said Saturday.

The student was visiting Qixing Park with classmates on Friday when he jumped the 6.5-foot (2-meter) -high fence around the panda’s habitat, said the park employee, who refused to give his name.

The park in Guilin, a popular tourist town in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, houses a small zoo and a panda exhibit. It was virtually deserted when the student scaled the fence surrounding the panda, named Yang Yang, the employee said.

He said the student was bitten in the arms and legs. Two foreign visitors who saw the attack ran to get help from workers at a nearby refreshment stand, who notified park officials, the employee said.

The student was pale as he was taken away by medics but appeared clear-headed, he said.

“Yang Yang was so cute and I just wanted to cuddle him. I didn’t expect he would attack,” the 20-year-old student, surnamed Liu, said in a local hospital, according to the official Xinhua News Agency.

Liu underwent surgery Friday evening and was out of danger, but will remain in the hospital for several days, Xinhua said.

Yang Yang, who was flown to Guilin last year from Sichuan province, was behaving normally on Saturday and did not seem to suffer any negative psychological effects, the park employee said.

He said it was not clear whether the facility would add more signs around the enclosure or put more fences up.

“We cannot make it like a prison. We already have signs up warning people not to climb in,” he said. “There are no fences along roads but people know not to cross if there are cars. This is basic knowledge.”

Pandas, which generally have a public image as cute, gentle creatures, are nonetheless wild animals that can be violent when provoked or startled.

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — At least 38 Warao Indians have died in remote villages in Venezuela, and medical experts suspect an outbreak of rabies spread by bites from vampire bats.

Laboratory investigations have yet to confirm the cause, but the symptoms point to rabies, according to two researchers from the University of California at Berkeley and other medical experts.

The two UC Berkeley researchers — the husband-and-wife team of anthropologist Charles Briggs and public health specialist Dr. Clara Mantini-Briggs — said the symptoms include fever, body pains, tingling in the feet followed by progressive paralysis, and an extreme fear of water. Victims tend to have convulsions and grow rigid before death.

Dr. Charles Rupprecht, chief of the rabies program at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, agreed with their preliminary diagnosis.

“The history and clinical signs are compatible with rabies,” Rupprecht told The Associated Press on Friday. “Prevention is straightforward: Prevent bites and vaccinate those at risk of bites.”

Venezuelan health officials are investigating the outbreak and plan to distribute mosquito nets to prevent bat bites and send a medical boat to provide treatment in remote villages on the Orinoco River delta, Indigenous Peoples Minister Nicia Maldonado said Thursday, according to the state-run Bolivarian News Agency.

Outbreaks of rabies spread by vampire bats are a problem in various tropical areas of South America, including Brazil and Peru, Rupprecht said.

He said researchers suspect that in some cases environmental degradation — including mining, logging or dam construction projects — may also be contributing to rabies outbreaks.

“Vampire bats are very adaptable,” Rupprecht said. And when their roosts are disrupted or their normal prey grow scarce, “Homo sapiens is a pretty easy meal.”

More study is needed to confirm through blood or other samples from victims that it is the rabies virus in Venezuela, researchers say.

At least 38 Warao Indians have died since June 2007, and at least 16 have died in the past two months, according to a report the Berkeley researchers and indigenous leaders provided to Venezuelan officials this week.

One village, Mukuboina, lost eight of its roughly 80 inhabitants — all of them children, Briggs said. All victims throughout the area died within two to seven days from the onset of symptoms, he said.

During a study trip Briggs and Mantini-Briggs made through 30 villages in the river delta, relatives said the victims had been bitten by bats. The couple have worked among the Warao in Delta Amacuro state for years and were invited by indigenous leaders to study the outbreak.

“It’s a monster illness,” said Tirso Gomez, a Warao traditional healer who said the indigenous group of more than 35,000 people has never experienced anything similar.

Mantini-Briggs, a Venezuelan former health official, said she was surprised to find many Warao villages now have cats — a new development. “The Waraos told us it was because there were too many bats that were biting the children,” she said.

Another tropical medicine expert, Dr. Daniel Bausch of Tulane University in New Orleans, agreed the symptoms and accounts suggest rabies transmitted by bats, and if confirmed, “probably a vaccination campaign would be in order.”

The researchers have begun taking precautions. Mantini-Briggs said she started to wonder about her own health Friday while talking with biologist Omar Linares, a bat expert at Simon Bolivar University.

She remembered there was blood on her sheet after sleeping in a hammock in a Warao village two weeks ago. Initially she had dismissed it as an unimportant insect bite or something else, but she remembered her finger hurting that morning and that she saw two small red dots there.

Confirming it must have been a bat bite, Linares suggested she get rabies shots immediately.

“I’m sure a bat bit me,” she said. “I remembered and said ‘I’m going to get vaccinated.’ “

DeLAND, Fla. — A giant cloud of thousands of bees mysteriously appeared and began to swirl in a “tornado pattern” around a Central Florida Mexican restaurant.

Customers at Oxie’s restaurant located near Highway 17-92 and Plymouth Avenue in DeLand said they noticed a cloud in the sky and thought it was raining. They then realized, the cloud was a swarm of bees.

“A lot of people said it was bees and ran to their cars,” restaurant owner Oxie Ochiana said. “It was scary. I was panicking. I didn’t know what to do.”

Witnesses said the bees began to swirl like a tornado and menace customers Thursday.

“I looked and it was like a tornado of bees just all around our parking lot, swarming,” said restaurant worker Marie Olson.

A crowd formed at a distance to watch the cloud of bees.

“It was crazy,” Olson said. “I was shocked. I was surprised to see it. I don’t know where they came from, so it was amazing to actually see them like that. It was awesome.”

State bee experts said the bees, which were moving from tree to tree, are now resting because they have formed two huge cone-shaped swarms in a tree.

Experts said the bees would likely move out about 24 hours after forming the cones.

However, Ochiana called beekeepers to remove the cones from nearby trees Thursday night.

Emory University officials say the early morning discovery of a zebra in a campus building was the latest in a history of animal-related pranks.

Someone — officials figure it was students — broke into Seney Hall on the school’s Oxford campus and placed a live zebra on the third floor. Public safety workers found the full-grown animal when they opened the building about 7 a.m., said Dean Stephen Bowen.

Bowen said it was immediately clear this was part of a long-standing tradition of depositing farm and zoo animals on campus.

The last time it happened, however, was in the 1960s when someone placed a cow in the same building.

“It’s been about 50 years, and we hope it’s another 50 years” before it happens again, Bowen said shortly after Newton County animal control officers removed the zebra about 11:30 a.m. Wednesday.

Bowen said it was unlikely the responsible party would be punished.

“We’re not launching a major manhunt” he joked.

Whoever put the zebra in the building made sure it didn’t get hurt.

“They lined up a row of chairs so the animal couldn’t get close to the windows and injure itself,” Bowen said.

No one immediately reported a missing zebra, Bowen said, leading school officials to believe the owner may have been in on the prank.

This is metro Atlanta’s second zebra incident in recent weeks.

(prior zebra story)

Noah’s Ark, an exotic animal rescue center in Locust Grove, is used to taking in unusual animals. But they aren’t commonly found grazing along I-75.

Lt. Matt Garrison with the Butts County Sheriff’s Office said he was directing traffic around a broken-down vehicle Tuesday morning when a woman stopped and told him a zebra was near the roadway.

“You mean a zebra like in Africa zebra?” he asked. When she said “yes,” he went to take a look.

“I said, ‘This I’ve got to see,’ but she was right. There was a zebra.:

The state Department of Natural Resources called Noah’s Ark and asked if they could pick up a baby zebra calmly eating grass near exit 201 on the busy interstate, about 10 miles from the Henry County center. Staff members headed out to pick up the cute striped guy.

The zebra looked fine from a distance, but when rescuers got close, they found the young male was severely injured. Their vet said he probably fell from a truck or trailer and then was hit by another vehicle.

The group, which takes in homeless animals and children and has more than 1,000 animals at its center — including lions, tigers and bison — called the Auburn University vet school and made arrangements to have the zebra examined.

“The police kept referring to him as evidence, so we decided to call him ‘Evidence,’ ” said Diane Smith, assistant to the director at Noah’s Ark, which is about 30 miles south of Atlanta. “He’s going to have a permanent home with us.”

They loaded Evidence into their van — after removing most of the seats — and headed to Auburn. Smith said the Auburn vets decided Evidence, estimated to be two to three months old, needed surgery to survive. His pelvis was crushed, and he had nerve damage and a severed urethra, which had to be rerouted.

“The laceration on his rear was about 10 inches across,” said Dr. Huichu Lin, the school’s equine section chief.

Lin acknowledged the Auburn vets don’t see a lot of zebras, so “we treated him like a horse.” She said in addition to the pelvic fracture, the 225-pound baby also had a number of soft tissue and muscle injuries.

The surgery was Wednesday morning, and by Thursday Evidence was walking around and eating. Still, he has a long recovery ahead, Lin said, adding she expects him to stay at the vet school for a week or two.

Officials are still trying to figure out where the little zebra was going and who was hauling him.

Garrison said he didn’t know how long the animal was out there, but a man on Monday reported hitting a mule in the same area. He now wonders if the man may have hit a zebra instead.

“His car was badly damaged — it had to be towed off — but we couldn’t find a carcass, and we didn’t know what a mule would be doing out there anyway,” the sheriff’s lieutenant said.

Melissa Cummings, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Natural Resources, said there are no licensed zebra breeders in Georgia, and a license is required to keep one.

“Only one individual is licensed to have a zebra in that area and they claimed to have no knowledge of it,” Cummings said.

She also said no one reported losing a zebra.

Once Evidence is released from the hospital, he will return to Noah’s Ark, which is licensed to have exotic animals, Cummings said. The center houses more than 1,000 homeless animals, and it also is a group home for up to 24 children. The center gets some grants and state money for the children, but most income is from donations and fundraisers.

Officials at the vet school estimated the surgery will cost at least $5,000, plus costs for follow-up. Although Noah’s Ark officials didn’t have the money, they told the vets to operate to save Evidence. Now they hope donations will cover the cost.

Said Smith: “He just has such a tremendous will to live, we couldn’t give up on him.”

Dutch council officials will permit gay sex in public areas but fine dog owners who let their pets off the leash in Amsterdam’s Vondelpark.

Paul van Grieken, an Alderman in the Oud-Zuid district of the city, has startled many Amsterdammers, despite their famously liberal attitudes, with plans to allow public sex as part of this summer’s new rules of conduct for the country’s best-known park.

“Why should we try to impose something that is actually impossible to impose, which also causes little bother for others and for a certain group actually means much pleasure?”, he said.

Amsterdam’s beautiful Vondelpark in the centre of city draws hordes of summer visitors, families, skaters and joggers.

But the park’s rose garden has become famous as a trysting spot for gay men looking for uncomplicated sexual encounters.

Mr van Grieken stresses that tolerance to “cruising” gays, aimed at protecting homosexuals from violence, will have “strict rules attached”.

“Thus, condoms must always be cleared away, it must never take place in the neighbourhood of children’s playgrounds and the sex must be restricted to the evening and night-time,” he said.

The new park rules have the blessing of the Dutch police, who have urged all Dutch parks to follow Amsterdam’s lead.

But Amsterdam’s dog owners are less impressed. The new park code of conduct will set out stiff fines for dogs that are allowed to run around the Vondelpark off the leash.

“Research showed that many people find this disturbing,” said Mr van Grieken.

One dog owner protested: “As long as the park has existed, we’ve been allowed to let our dogs run freely. It’s outrageous that we will be punished from now on but public sex won’t. If they can drop their trousers, why can’t I let my dog loose?”

A year ago, he was a cute and cuddly ball of white fur who captured the hearts of millions worldwide.

But Knut the polar bear has grown up fast – as this startled young visitor to Berlin Zoo discovered.

Knut now weighs 22 stone and has six-inch claws and a fearsome set of fangs to match.

And he seemed to be particularly keen to test them on the three-year-old boy lying on the ground next to his enclosure.

Fortunately for the youngster, six inches of glass capable of withstanding a mortar attack separated him from the jaws of the world’s most famous captive bear.

Knut was rejected by his mother at birth in December 2006.

Some animal rights activists said it would be better for him to die than to be weaned by mankind.

The zoo directors decided to let him live, however, and he went on to become a major attraction, pulling in £5million in revenue in a year.

But his days of being picked up and cuddled are long gone.

He is, after all, a wild animal and now not even the keeper who raised him by hand dares to get close.

A BOY can reportedly only communicate by ‘chirping’ – after living his life in a virtual aviary.

According to reports from Russia, the 7-year-old ‘bird boy’ has spent his life in a flat filled with bird cages with a mum who treated him like one of her pets.

Pravda said the boy’s 31-year-old mum did not talk him and treated him like a bird, forcing him to learn avian language.

Social worker Galina Volskaya said shocked authorities discovered the boy in a two-bedroom apartment with bird mess littering the floor.

Volskaya said: “When you start talking to him, he chirps.”

And she added that the boy becomes frustrated at not being able to communicate and flaps his arms.

Pravda reported that authorities believe the boy is suffering from Mowgli syndrome, after the Jungle Book character who is raised by wild animals.

The boy has reportedly been released by authorities and put in a medical facility.

Kansas — A woman responding to a break-in in her garage found a man having sexual intercourse with her 4-year-old female rottweiler, police said Wednesday.

The woman called police Tuesday night after finding the 20-year-old man.

Police arrested the man, who they say had a prior conviction for the same crime less than six months ago.

“This is the first time that I’ve ever seen this… and I’ve been in law enforcement a long time,” said Lt. Sam Hanley, who leads the department’s sex crimes unit.

The man was booked into Sedgwick County Jail on suspicion of criminal sodomy and aggravated burglary.

The burglary was included because the man is suspected of breaking into the garage while someone was home, police said.

He had lived with the family for a while last year in the 3700 block of East Clark, police said.

The man pleaded no contest to having sex with an animal last September in Reno County and was fined $353, according to court documents.

He also can be found on an Internet Web site where people show photos and tell stories about sex with animals, Capt. Darrell Haynes said.

The rottweiler was not injured, Hanley said, but a Kansas Humane Society spokeswoman said the incident still qualifies as animal cruelty.

“It is abuse,” said Jennifer Campbell, director of communications for the Kansas Humane Society. “That is committing a violent act toward that animal.”

Campbell said she hopes investigators explore whether the incident was an attempt to strike out at the dog’s owners.

“That’s where a lot of animal cruelty starts,” she said.

Research has shown that perpetrators “are frustrated and angry and upset, and animals are vulnerable,” Campbell said.

BREMERTON, Wash. — A 25-year-old woman was arrested for investigation of second-degree assault for getting into an argument with her boyfriend over whether his dog should be in the bathroom while the couple were taking a shower together.

A police report said the man, 26, wanted his dog to join them in the bathroom, but the woman objected on Thursday night.

The woman told her boyfriend that if the dog doesn’t stay out, she didn’t want to be his girlfriend anymore. He replied that maybe his next girlfriend would appreciate the dog more, and called her a name.

The police report said the woman punched him in the face several times and the man dislocated his shoulder after the naked couple grappled. He told police his girlfriend threw a picture frame, which broke and cut him.

The woman was taken to the Kitsap County Jail in Port Orchard. Bail has been set at $50,000.

Hybrid embryos containing both human and animal material could be created in British laboratories within months.

The controversial research was given a green light yesterday by the UK’s fertility regulator.

A shortage of human eggs led scientists to seek permission to make hybrid embryos from human skin cells and animal eggs such as those from cows, which are plentiful in slaughterhouses.

Two teams of scientists are poised to start making cow-human hybrids for research into incurable diseases, with at least one project expected to start by the end of the year.

Stem cell expert Dr Stephen Minger, who wants to use the embryos to study conditions such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and motor neurone disease, said the work could “revolutionise drug discovery”.

But the decision by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority is likely to be subject to a High Court challenge, with opponents claiming the watchdog is not entitled to rule on the issue.

Josephine Quintavalle, of the campaign group Comment on Reproductive Ethics, said last night: “There is a sense from some people that scientists should never be stopped in their tracks.

“Reproduction with animals has been taboo since the beginning of recorded time and that taboo has remained with us for a reason.

“This is tampering at a very basic level.”

Britain is one of the first Western countries to approve such research.

A woman in Australia has been killed by her pet camel after the animal may have tried to have sex with her.

The woman was found dead at the family’s sheep and cattle ranch near the town of Mitchell in Queensland.

The woman had been given the camel as a 60th birthday present earlier this year because of her love of exotic pets.

The camel was just 10 months old but already weighed 152kg (336lbs) and had come close to suffocating the family’s pet goat on a number of occasions.

On Saturday, the woman apparently became the object of the male camel’s desire.

It knocked her to the ground, lay on top of her and displayed what the police delicately described as possible mating behaviour.

“I’d say it’s probably been playing, or it may be even a sexual sort of thing,” the Associated Press news agency quoted Queensland police Detective Senior Constable Craig Gregory as saying.

Young camels are not normally aggressive but can become more threatening if treated and raised as pets.

For the second Saturday in a row, jellyfish stung hundreds of beachgoers in New Smyrna Beach and sent lifeguards scrambling for more white vinegar, a common salve.

“Every guard had to ask for a vinegar restock,” said Beach Patrol Capt. Tony Sopotnick. A 16-year-old girl was taken to Bert Fish Medical Center after she went into anaphylactic shock from a sting; otherwise, no one else was seriously injured by the jellyfish, only irritated.

The blooms – which are confined to the New Smyrna Beach area – were likely blown in by southeasterly winds, Sopotnick said. Lifeguards in Daytona Beach and Flagler reported only a few stings.

But, what are they?

“None are washing up on shore,” he said, “which is making it difficult to positively identify them.”

Beach Patrol officer Elmer Foit guessed the jellyfish might belong to a group known as sea wasps, one of the most venomous jellyfish in the world. The good news is that the sea wasps found here are likely native to the Atlantic Ocean and not as dangerous as their relatives in Australia where a single jellyfish has enough venom to kill 60 people in three minutes.

Sopotnick said the Beach Patrol would contact researchers this week to definitively identify the jellyfish.

People who do get stung should not rub fresh water on the wound because it will reactivate the toxic poisons, Foit said.

Instead, you can take Benadryl or rub cortisone cream on the infected area to soothe the irritation. Or, as patrol officers are resorting to – get bathed in white vinegar.

“It’s a little bit like a bee sting,” Foit said. “And, for the most part, they’re harmless. But they are painful and will leave an itch.”

They also leave red welts on the skin. He did say that the majority of swimmers in the ocean did not get stung Saturday.

“We might have had 5,000 bathers ” he said, “Only 300 to 400 were stung.”

Swimmers Sunday should look for purple flags flying from lifeguard stands, which indicate jellyfish are still invading. Last weekend, they floated away as fast as they came, leaving the area by Sunday.

“It’s unusual to have hundreds of stings in New Smyrna and very few on the Daytona side,” Sopotnick said. “We will have to see what tomorrow brings.”

Sherborn, MASS — A Sherborn teen was charged yesterday with having sex with sheep at a farm near his home, and police reports suggest the encounters may have gone on for nearly a year.

Roger Henderson II, 18, was arraigned yesterday in Natick District Court on charges of bestiality, cruelty to animals and breaking and entering in connection with an incident police say took place at Boggastow Farm on June 27.

According to a police report, the farm’s barn had been the target of at least a dozen break-ins between August 2006 and June 2007, prompting the property owner to install surveillance cameras.

Between 3 and 4 a.m. on June 27, according to police, the camera captured and filmed a person identified as Roger Henderson II.

The man grabbed a sheep by its hind legs and dragged it to the corner of the stall, according to police. The man removed his clothes and appeared to have sexual relations with the sheep. After finishing, the man put his pants back on and left the barn with his shirt in his hand, according to the report.

Following his arraignment yesterday, Henderson was released to the custody of his parents, on the condition he stay at least 30 yards away from the farm, and animals in general.

The teen also was ordered to “report immediately to Leonard Morse (Hospital) to continue current mental health treatment,” according to court documents.

A woman at Boggastow Farm yesterday shouted, “no comment” to reporters before later threatening to call police.

Yesterday’s proceedings took just minutes, as not guilty pleas were entered on the three charges and didn’t require Henderson to appear in open court. Prosecutors, defense attorneys and police met with Judge Douglas Stoddard behind closed doors before agreeing to release the teen to his parents.

Following the proceeding, Henderson left the court through a back door, covering his face with a black T-shirt. He was quickly whisked away in a dark red Jeep Cherokee.

Henderson is due back in court Sept. 4 for a pretrial conference.

NEW YORK — A peacock that roamed into the parking lot of a fast-food restaurant was attacked by a man who vilified the bird as a vampire, animal-control authorities said.

Beaten so fiercely that most of his tail feathers fell out, the bird was euthanized, said Richard Gentles, a spokesman for the city’s Center for Animal Care and Control.

“It’s just unbelievable that someone would do something to a poor, defenseless animal and do it in such a cruel fashion,” he said.

The peacock, a male several years old, wandered into a Burger King parking lot in the New York borough of Staten Island and perched on a car hood Thursday morning. Charmed employees were feeding him bread when the man appeared.

He seized the iridescent bird by the neck, hurled it to the ground and started kicking and stomping the creature, said worker Felicia Finnegan, 19.

“He was going crazy,” she said.

Asked what he was doing, she said, the attacker explained, “‘I’m killing a vampire!’”

Employees called police, but the man ran when he saw them. Authorities were looking for the attacker, described as in his teens or early 20s.

It was not clear how the bird made his way to the Burger King, but a Staten Island resident who raises peacocks said he had given some to a person who lives near the restaurant.