Crickey!: Man stuck up tree in crocodile infested swamp for 7 days.

 Don’t look down!

Crickey!

In the true stereotypical Aussie spirit of Steve Irwin and Crocodile Dundee, a 54-year-old Australian man has spent seven nights up a tree over a crocodile infested swamp in the isolated Cape York Peninsula in Australia’s tropical north.

The man who works and co-owns a massive cattle station (ranch), called Silver Plains, was stalked by two massive crocodiles for the entire ordeal, who were waiting patiently for the man to make a slip and fall into the infested nest below.

“Every night I was stalked by two crocs who would sit at the bottom of the tree staring up at me,” David George told Aussie media.

“All I could see was two sets of red eyes below me and all night I had to listen to a big bull croc bellowing a bit further out.

“I’d yell out at them, ‘I’m not falling out of this tree for you bastards’.”

The cavalier bushman left the station homestead on horseback intending to spend a few nights out in the scrub for maintenance duties, when just before dawn on the second day he had a fall when riding, experiencing a heavy knock to the head.

The stockman managed to get back on his horse, but was too disorientated to know exactly which way to go and his ride ended up taking him into thick croc infested swamp land.

“Doing that I hit my arm and my head and was sort of half-dazed,” Mr George said.

“Then I got back on the horse … I let the horse go, knowing he’d take me home.

But his horse was not as smart as he had assumed.

“When I realised where we were, we were about a kilometre into the swamp.”

Once in the thick of it David decided to get off as the soggy ground was making it tough for the horse to move, and found himself stumbling though the marshy terrain when he came across a croc nest.

When he changed directions to flee, he soon came across another nest, and it was then that he realised that he was in serious trouble.

One tough Bloke.

Deciding that he could not lead the horse out safely without risking his own life, he left the doomed horse and made a be-line for a nearby tree and played the waiting game.

“I took the stirrup leather off and strapped myself to the tree,” he said.

“I knew I could either stay put and wait to be rescued, or venture out and chance being eaten by a croc.

“Every night from the second night on I could hear a bull croc bellowing out, and each night he seemed to be getting closer.”

Later, a search and rescue mission began, where helicopters regularly passed over the top of his position, but the bush was way too thick for crews to spot him.

The scrub was that thick they could not see me through the foliage. It was very frustrating – they flew within 20 feet (6m) of me at one stage,”

He was eventually found by an Australian Army chopper crew, and winched to safety.

He was taken to hospital with nothing but a few scratches and a serious bout of hunger.

It was unkown what happened to the horse, but one can assume it became a tasty treat for the friendly fresh water crocs. 

See our man here…

I prefer the real Crocodile Dundee.

That’s not a knife… That’s a lame youtube video.

Go on, tell the world!

Crazy Weekend: World’s Biggest Condom?, Mile High Fun, A Fishy Tale & A Shark Frenzy

 

World’s Biggest Condom?

  The Weekend that was…

The mysteries of the ocean, the lust and oddities of the sky feature in this edition of…..

The Crazy News: Quick Quotes.

UK

“We got chatting and it went a bit further. And it was every man’s dream, to be honest.”

Entrepreneur and Virgin boss Richard Branson on his joining of the ‘mile high club’ at the ripe old age of 19.

Indonesia

“It was an enormous fish. It had phosphorescent green eyes and legs. If I had pulled it up during the night, I would have been afraid and I would have thrown it back in.”

Indonesian fisherman Justinus Lahama on his astonishing catch of a rare coelacanth fish. Oceanic scientists want him to reconstruct his lucky haul so they can understand the species that is at least 360 million years old and was once thought to have become extinct with the dinosaurs.

Holland

“This is a playful way of asking for attention to the problem of sexually transmitted diseases, HIV and AIDS.”

The director of Dutch Health Services explains the motivation behind a giant condom shaped hot air balloon drifting lazily across the sky at a music/motor cross festival in Lichtenvoorde.

UK

“It was horrifying. If I’d have known it was a great white at the time I would have panicked.”

A British woman shocked to have caught a Great White Shark on film in British waters. The British media are now in a ‘Jaws frenzy’.

Italy

“The people were offloaded because they failed to comply with safety instructions when the aircraft was taxiing. Two passengers stood up and refused to sit down.”

A spokesperson explains why three Qatari princesses were kicked off a flight from Milan after they refused to sit next to male passengers they did not know.

For the record it wasn’t a Virgin flight….

“I knew that giant condom would come in handy….”

Video: Puppy takes on rattlesnake, survives to fight another day!

 The unlikely hero.

 The most famous Chihuahua in the world is probably our friend Paris Hilton’s 3,000 Euro pet/fashion accessory Tinkerbell.

 Move over Tinkerbell

But an unlikely hero has emerged to take that most famous Chihuahua spot away.

And it has the hallmarks of an epic battle of David and Goliath proportions.

A puppy Chihuahua named Zoey is being hailed as a hero after taking on an aggravated rattlesnake who threatened a 1-year-old boy in the backyard of a town in Colorado, USA.

Media Reports:

Zoey was in her master’s back yard, July 12, in the foothills west of Loveland.

Her master, Monty Long, was sitting on his back patio watching his grandson, Booker West.

The toddler was playing by the birdbath when Zoey darted between him and a rock on the other side. The rattlesnake was on the rock.

“As soon as she went in she yipped and came running back out,” Long said.

The grandfather said he ran over and grabbed the toddler, then took him out of harms way. Then, he said, he grabbed a pipe and took care of the snake.

“It was up in the position to strike again,” Long said.

Zoey still has a one inch scar from the attack.

“Her head was the size of a large grapefruit,” said Denise Long, the boy’s grandmother. “You couldn’t tell where her eyes were… just this little button that you could tell was her nose.”

The vet treated Zoey with antivenin and blood plasma. She has since recovered from the snakebite.

Denise Long said she hated to see her dog get bitten, but she’s glad it was the dog and not her grandson.

So is the toddler’s Mom. “I was terrified,” said Lynsie West. “I used to go out on my 4 Wheeler all the time and I’d see them constantly (snakes), but it never scared me as much as it does now. Oooh, it just gives me the chills.”

Monty Long said after everything settled down and the dog was treated by the vet, he had time to stop and think about what happened, and what almost happened. “That’s when the cold chills went up my neck, for about two hours.”

Long said he’ll be keeping a closer eye on his own back yard from now on.

He said this isn’t the first time there’s been a snakebite on his property.

“About four years ago a rattler bit Cherokee (his painted horse) on the nose.”

The quick thinking Long placed a hose in the horse’s nose before it swelled shut. That action, and another call to the vet, helped save the horse.

The Longs said they understand that snakes are part of the landscape where they live.

They said they’re glad that Zoey lives there too.

“She’s not your typical Chihuahua,” Denise said, “she’s not mean; she’s just a sweet little dog.”

Yipes!

One brave little puppy dog…

Let it snow! SE Australia in a freeze.

As most people in the Northern Hemisphere fry in the heat, it’s quite the opposite where I am, Down Under way.

Australia’s most highly populated area, the south east where cities like Melbourne and Sydney lie, is experiencing some of the coldest weather on record.

Sydneysiders woke up to their coldest July morning in 21 years.

Meanwhile to the south of Sydney, in the state of Victoria, roads were closed due to freezing and the city of Melbourne was hammered with high winds.

It’s alive! Species of mammal once thought extinct is alive and well.

Oh, yes indeed. How exciting!

It’s not yet official, but a research team visiting the deep jungles of Papua New Guinea believe that an echidna named after British naturalist Sir David Attenborough, thought to no longer exist, is actually still alive, reports the BBC:

The month-long expedition by scientists from the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) involved travelling to parts of the mountain range, covered by thick jungle, which had remained unexplored for more than 45 years.

Jonathan Baillie, ZSL’s Evolutionarily Distinct and Globally Endangered (Edge) programme manager, said: “We hope that Sir David Attenborough will be delighted to hear that his namesake species is still surviving in the wilds of the Papaun jungle.”

The creature had not been recorded since a Dutch botanist collected the only known specimen in the cloud forest of the Cyclops Mountains in 1961.

As a result, it was widely assumed that the shoe box-sized species (Zaglossus attenboroughi) was extinct.

But while the Edge team were in the area, they spoke to local tribespeople who said that they had seen the creature as recently as 2005.

The scientists also discovered “nose pokes”, holes in the ground made by the echidnas as they stuck their long noses into soil to feed.

Man sits on $5 billion riches, but he’s not interested in it.

 

Jeffrey Lee is one Australian not interested in becoming the world’s next billionare.

As the last living member of an Indigenous Australian clan, he is the custodian to a sacred piece of land near the world famous Kakadu National Park, called Koongarra. A swath of land in Australia’s Northern Territory that French nuclear energy giant Areva would love to mine for pricey uranium.

At a potential Australian $5 billion (US$4.5B) plus windfall, Jeffrey isn’t interested in the temptation of riches; he’s much more interested in preserving this amazing part of the world for the future.

But he may be running of time. He has no partner and doesn’t have any children.

Although the Australian Government has promised the land won’t be mined unless the traditional land owners give the green light, if Lee doesn’t have any children before he dies and the land doesn’t become world heritage listed, then his wishes may be denied.

“I’m not interested in money. I’ve got a job; I can buy tucker; I can go fishing and hunting. That’s all that matters to me.”

Sydney Morning Herald has more on the last of the Djok clan.

World’s biggest mushroom?

A MORE than 20kg mushroom has been picked in a forest in Mexico’s southernmost state of Chiapas, university officials said today.

The white mushroom, macrocybe titans, measured a towering 70cm tall, was found near Tapachula, near the Guatemalan border, according to the Southern Border University Centre.

  El mushroom.

Earn money from dead flies, the Chinese know how to do it.

You really have to admire the crazy lengths the Chinese will go to tackle a problem.

Media reports that a Chinese city is paying people to hand in dead flies in a bid  “to push residents to do more for their living environment”.

Xigong, a district of Luoyang in the central province of Henan, paid out more than 1,000 yuan (US$125) for about 2,000 dead flies on July 1, the day it launched the scheme with the aim of encouraging cleanliness in residential areas.

The payment scheme is the first of its kind in Luoyang, a city of 1.55 million people which is striving to earn the title of “state-level hygienic city”.3

China has a history of using unorthodox means to eradicate pests. When Mao Zedong launched the “Four Pests” campaign during the Great Leap Forward in the 1950s, citizens were ordered to kill flies, mosquitoes, rats and sparrows.

Pest control efforts included banging pots and pans to scare sparrows into flight and have them eventually drop to earth dead from exhaustion.

Meanwhile a Chinese business entrepenour and kung-fu master, Hu Shulin, has turned a life-long battle against flies and the diseases they carry into a multi-million dollar business.

     Kung foo master Shulin (AKA Flyman)

After spending years honing his fly hand catching skills with his lightning fast reflexes, Master Shulin has invented a machine that efficently attracts flies and then deposits them into a clear plastic tank.

It’s like a nightclub for flies,” said Mr Hu. “They just party themselves to death.”

Mr Hu’s factory makes 100,000 ‘Highly Effective Fly Slaying Machines’ a year, that are exported to South Korea.

Mr Hu keeps his victims corpses — all 30 million of them— in a large bag in his office.

In Worlds fastest ageing nation, even pet dogs get nursing home.

 

Japan is about to have its first aged care facility for mans best friend, the dog.

20 dogs nearing the end of thier lives will be pampered and cared for at a facility set up by Saradi Corporation, cashing in on a demand for dog carers, as many people become too old to care for their own pets.

The facility, located in the resort area of Nasu north of Tokyo, will have a veterinarian on standby 24 hours a day and the dogs will be able to exercise regualarly, eat natural foods and mix with younger dogs to maintain their vitality.

“We see a strong demand for these services, partly because owners are ageing alongside their dogs and also because many women work nowadays, leaving them no time to care for their dogs,” the companies chief executive Nana Uchida says.

Japan is the world’s fastest-ageing nation, with 40 per cent of the population expected to be over 65 in the next 50 years. The average lifespan of Japan’s 13 million dogs has also extended from five years or less in the 1980s, to 15 years or more recently, thanks to improved diet and medical care.

One old whale, 1880’s weapon fragment found in huge mammal caught off Alaska.

 

Fragments of a weapon used by whale hunters off Alaska in the 1800’s has been found lodged in a Bowhead whale, caught by the indigenous Inupiat people recently.

The fragment shows that the whale could be nearly 130 years old, said Craig George, a wildlife biologist with the borough’s Department of Wildlife Management.

“It was probably at least a yearling when it was struck, because the whalemen never took calves”

  

The Beautiful Bowhead whale in icy Alaskan waters.

The fragment of bomb lace was given to scientists by the Inupiat whalers, who are allowed to catch up to 50 of the speices a year in Alaskan waters.  The hunt is managed by the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission. There is a population of around 8,000 Bowheads in Alaskan waters.

The Inupiat have long said that bowhead whales live for the equivalent of two human lifetimes, and the find suggest that knowledge is indeed right.

Commercial whaling is banned worldwide, althought the Japanese would like that to change. Native tribes from Alaska, Greenland and parts of Russia are allowed to hunt whales under a non-commercial agreement.

 In Alaska, meat from hunted whales is distributed to all residents of the hunters’ villages.

Inupiat in Alaska divide up whale meat.

National Geographic video: Bowhead Whales.

Zoo animals join in on peak hour traffic.

 

 

Commuters in Berlin found themselves sharing the road with escapees from a local zoo — six horses, three camels, two goats and a llama.

The animals escaped from a small petting zoo in the east of the capital and appeared shortly before 7 a.m. local time at a busy roundabout a few hundred meters away, local police said.

The animals’ excursion, which led to minor disruption but no injuries, was ended swiftly. The horses were caught in a nearby park and the llama at a cemetery, police said. Their comrades also were apprehended.

It was not immediately clear how the animals escaped.

Where did all the animals go?

“Beeb, beeb!”, ‘Roadrunner’ dinosaur species discovered

3ft-long plant-eating dinosaur called Eocursor has been identified by paleontologists. Fossil remains of a single specimen of the dinosaur were discovered in South Africa in 1993, but have only recently been studied.

3ft-long plant-eating dinosaur stood on two legs, was about the size of a large dog and was built for speed. It was a primitive member of a large group of dinosaurs called the ornithischians and lived about 220 million years ago and lived in vast herds of up to 10,000.

Working with scientists at the Iziko South African Museum in Cape Town, and experts from Cambridge University in England, paleontologist Dr Butler compared Eocursor’s anatomy with that of ornithischians from all over the world.

The researchers produced a new evolutionary tree showing how primitive members of the family were related.

It suggested that they spread throughout the world later than was previously thought.

“By placing Eocursor in an evolutionary tree we can begin to understand when and why ornithiscian dinosaurs became so important,” said Dr Butler.

“It seems that primitive ornithiscians were scarce, and the group succeeded by taking advantage of the extinction of other plant-eating reptiles at the end of the Triassic about 200 million years ago.”

Idiocy or Intelligence? Croc man goes boldly where no man should ever.

   

It’s unlikely that anybody will copy the Crocodile Hunter, but Steve Irwin would surely approve of Dr Brady Barr — he impersonates crocodiles.

The renowned National Geographic reptile researcher has developed a unique crocodile-shaped protective suit that allows him to get right next to the fearsome beasts in the wild.

As an added defence, Dr Barr smears himself with animal dung to mask his humour odour.

While it lacks the function of Roger Moore’s floating suit in the James Bond film ‘Octopussy’, the croc suit proved effective in letting Dr Barr get right next to some endangered Nile crocodiles in Egypt.

And this croc-man is no newcomer to the animal communing game: he’s been getting to know all manner of wild beasts for the past 15 years, and seeks out the poison of the black mamba snake and the ‘bite force’ of several of the planet’s most frightening predators as part of his latest mission.

Video: Walking with crocodiles

Penguins hitch rides north of the border.

  

How did the penguin cross the border? The question has vexed biologists ever since a Humboldt penguin, native to South America, was found off the coast of Alaska in 2002.

Now they have a likely answer: The flightless bird hitched a ride on a fishing boat.

“Penguins are kind of cute. People like them, and they’re pretty easy to pick up,” said Dee Boersma, a conservation biologist at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Boersma and graduate student Amy Van Buren looked at a series of possibilities for the out-of-place seabird and concluded the boat ride is the best explanation.

They speculate that other penguins spotted in North American waters, although very rare, may also have traveled by fishing boat.

A study on the Humboldt penguin’s trek is published this month in the Wilson Journal of Ornithology

        Happy Humboldt penguins

Check out this video of a cute new baby humboldt penguin at the Oregon Zoo.

Al Hill’s leg comes off, no pain killers, just his poket knife.

  

A man has cut off his own leg with a pocket knife after being trapped under a fallen tree. 

66-year-old Al Hill was alone in the California woods cutting down trees when one apparently fell his way, pinning him for almost 12 hours before he made the drastic decision to part ways with his leg.

“He had a cell phone that couldn’t get out and he started cutting his own leg off,” said longtime friend Cathy Morgan.

Hill had nearly severed his leg by the time a prospector looking for gold nearby heard his cries for help.

“He was in a position where he could not move four inches. I mean he was stuck,” said the Gold digger.

The prospector and another man were able to use Hill’s chainsaw to remove the tree. A medical helicopter flew Hill to a nearby medcial center where doctors completed the amputation below the left knee.

A hospital spokeswoman said Hill was in serious condition on Wednesday, and that he was declining interviews.

News of Hill’s ordeal has captivated the tiny isolated town of Iowa Hill about 100 kilometres north-east of the California capital, Sacramento, where there is no electricity and few services for its 150 or so residents.

“Everybody has just kind of pulled together,” The town’s volenteer fire chief told media. “Anything he needs, we’ll be there for him.”

Residents described Hill as a private man, serious and reserved but well-respected. He is a remnant of the sawmill industry that once dominated their town.

The story is reminicent of a May 2003 incident when 27-year-old Aron Ralston used a pocket knife to amputate his own arm below the elbow in a desperate bid to free himself after being trapped for five days under an 360-kilogram boulder in a national park in Utah.

But Aron Ralston was trapped for 5 long, hard days. This Al Hill fella was only trapped for about 12 hours. Was this a drastic measure, what would you do if you were pinned and had the chance to get out by cutting yourself free? Would you cut or wait?

Whos top of the food chain? Lion joins in with Tiger in deadly attack on man.

 

A 56 year old man in Mexico City has lost his life after a lion and tiger kept as exotic pets on the roof of a Mexican meat processing plant attacked while being fed.

Caretaker Angel Aguilar was feeding chicken to the cats when the lion swiped through the bars of a steel cage used to keep the animals, pulling him inside. The tiger then joined in the attack.

The man was still alive when paramedics arrived on scene in the neighborhood of Iztapalapa, but they could not get past the animals to treat him.

The two big cats, which had separate living quarters but came together to eat, were  kept by the plant’s owner as pets and were in good health.

After the attack, which left scraps of bloodstained clothing on the floor of the cage, the animals were sedated and the tiger’s jaws tied around a chunk of wood.

The tiger later died, apparently of suffocation, after being transported by animal protection authorities to a nearby zoo in a small container. The lion survived the journey.

     Mexico city is the second largest city in the world.

Loch Ness Monster bounty, $2million could be yours. Rock on!

 

 As The Crazy News reported a few days ago, new video evidence caught by an Englishman has stirred renewed interest in the existence of the fabled Loch Ness monster.

 Something in the water….

And now some in the UK are cashing in on Nessie fever, offering a 1 million pound reward to anyone who can prove the actual existence of the monster.

Bookmakers William Hill are supplying up to 50,000 instant cameras to fans attending a Loch Ness pop festival in Scotland next weekend.

“We are hoping the one million pound bounty will help to solve one of the great enigmas of modern times,” William Hill spokesman Rupert Adams said.

The winner will have to offer proof that satisfies experts at London’s Natural History Museum.

The bookmakers are confident the bounty will not be claimed at the Rock Ness music festival on June 9 and 10 — they are offering odds of 250-1 about it happening in 2007

Caught fingerless, German man learns painful way , crime “doesn’t pay”.

  The finger

A breakin at Berlins Technical Museum left a burgular one finger short on Tuesday night.

A 35 year old man set off an alarm at the museum and soon found himself being chased by two securtity guards. He somehow escaped, climbed a 3 meter fence, which snagged a ring on his right hand.

The man managed to free himself — but only after tearing off the finger. The security guards arrested him when he went back to recover the severed digit and ask for medical aid.
“His comment afterwards was: ‘Breaking and entering doesn’t pay,’” said a spokeswoman for local police. Doctors were unable to reattach the man’s finger.

  Berlin Technical Museum

Jericho; TV fans go nuts after cancellation, literally.

  Not crazy, its f*#king nuts!

Passionate fans of TV show Jericho have launched, and may be winning, a campaign to have the show put back on the air by sending millions of nuts to CBS TV executives across the United States.

In May, when CBS Television cancelled the show about life in a small rural town after a nuclear holocaust, legions of fans were incenced, and plans were soon hatched to have the show re-instated. The idea to send nuts was soon chosen, and with a little help of some smart marketing from nutsonline.com, the campaign took off, and now some rumours say the show may get 8 more episodes. 

Quoting an anonymous source, The Associated Press Tuesday said CBS is reconsidering its decision to cancel the show. A decision on whether to bring the show back, probably for a mid-season run, is imminent. Is this a PR stunt to stem the flow of nuts, or is it genuine? Only time will tell Jericho fans.

Jericho cast and babes…

Why nuts?

In the final episode of “Jericho,” the town is under siege from a neighboring community.  When asked to surrender, lead character Jake Green, played by Skeet Ulrich, has a one-word response: “Nuts.”

The response is a reference to Gen. Anthony McAuliffe, a U.S. Army general who in World War II was surrounded by Germans demanding his surrender. His response: “Nuts.”

All I have to say is, what a waste of food.

See what all the fuss is about, 2006 Jericho promo. 

Xiang Xiang the Chinese Panda dies. Was he murdered?

RIP Xiangxiang

According to CNN the first ever panda to be bred in captivity and  released into the wild was killed after falling from a tree, and may have died after being chased by wild pandas. The body of Xiang Xiang, a male panda, was found February 9 this year.

Researchers from the Wolong Giant Panda Research Center in Sichuan told CNN that Xiang Xiang had serious internal injuries on his left side and that scratches and other minor marks on the mammals exterior had shown wild pandas previously attacked the 73 kilogram Xiang Xiang, whose name means auspicious.

The news of Xiang Xiangs death was only realesed today by the Chinese authorities who attributed the late notice to a need to fully investigate what happened. Authorites said that the Xiang Xiang case showed that groups of wild pandas were reluctant to accept male outsiders and that the next panda to be released would be female.

There are about 1,600 wild pandas in the mountainous forest areas of China, but the population is heavily threatened by the massive rise of the Chinese economy, adding strain to the natural environment.

 This was not XiangXiangs first run in with wild pandas. He was injured back in late 2006, but was again released into the wild. He is seen here in a Chinese language news report

Dead man rides through the night.

A Croatian man rode on a tram for nearly 6 hours before the driver discovered he had died. The 61-year-old man boarded the vehicle around midnight Friday night, and soon fell asleep.

The tram went on picking up and dropping off passengers throughout the night, a Croatian daily newspaper reported.

The driver, separated by a glass partition from the rest of the tram, tried to wake him up at the end of his shift and realized he was dead.

The police put the death down to natural causes but are still awaiting post-mortem results of the man identified as Tomislav K.

Make toads eat themselves, say scientists.

The key to control the plague like population explosion of cane toads in tropical northern Australia is to encourage toads to turn to cannibalism, resarch shows.

A discovered was made recently which showed that cane toads have a healthy appetite for their own young, consuming up to 12 other cane toads in a lifetime. Adult cane toads wave one of the three toes on their hind legs, luring in the young who are fooled into thinking it is an insect. The unsuspecting youngster is then eaten.

“We will modify ponds to encourage cane toads to breed in the same place then the toads can control themselves,” Professor Rick Shine’s of the University of Sydney said.

Adults will eat the young, dramatically reducing the number of offspring and, in turn, the number of cane toads mature enough to breed, he said.

“The aim is to concentrate cane toads to provide a much better situation for Australian fauna.

Since their introduction to Australia in 1932, the toads have been a destructive force, poisoning and killing native wildlife and have enough poison to kill a small dog.

A female cane toad can produce up to 35,000 offspring in one clutch meaning that the number of cane toads has reached astronomical levels.

“You’re one ugly mother f#cker..”