Monday, June 30, 2008

i love this story... it turns out great!

A Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) biologist pulled off a daring rescue off the Panhandle -- that of a bear.

Officials say a 375-pound male black bear was seen roaming a residential neighborhood, evidently in search of food, near Alligator Point, some 40 miles south of Tallahassee.

The bear was hit with a tranquilizer dart, but he managed to bolt into the Gulf of Mexico before the drugs took effect.

At that point, FWC biologist Adam Warwick jumped in to keep the bear, who was some 25 yards offshore, from drowning.

He managed to get the bear to shore, and then a backhoe operator helped load the animal onto a truck. The bear was relocated to Osceola National Forest near Lake City, Fla.

On The Early Show Monday, Warwick told co-anchor Maggie Rodriguez he wasn't worried about the bear injuring him as much as a sting ray stinging him.

"I just wanted to try to get in front of him and keep him from swimming out there and drowning," Warwick says.

The bear, he continued, "started to swim, started to make the four-mile swim across the harbor. And so, I looked at (a colleague) and I said, 'I've got to go out there and stop him.' So, I took off my shirt and shoes, jumped in the water and swam in the direction to head him off and keep him from going into deeper water. Once I did that, I got in front of him, tried to create some splashing and some commotion and tried to get him to go back into shore. But he wasn't having any of that. The scariest part was probably when he decided -- he started looking at me as if he wanted to climb up on me to keep from drowning and, at one point, he reared up on his hind legs, so I'm looking at a six-and-a-half-foot tall bear. Instead of lunging forward, he fell straight back and was submerged for a couple of seconds and, that's kinda when I moved in."

According to FWC, "Warwick kept one arm underneath the bear and the other gripping the scruff of its neck to keep the bear's head above water. Warwick said he walked barefoot over concrete blocks crusted with barnacles in the 4-foot-deep water as he tried to guide and use the water to help float the bear back to shore.

He said he cut his feet on the barnacles and the bear scratched him once on the foot, but he was otherwise uninjured.

Area resident Wendy Chandler said Warwick looked like a lifeguard, pulling a tired swimmer to shore.

Warwick said the bear's buoyancy made his job less difficult.

"It's a lot easier to drag a bear in 4-foot water than move him on dry land," he said.

Thursday, June 26, 2008

how cute is this kid?


this cracked me up....

That's my boy... Tim McGraw to the rescue...



Tim McGraw helped members of his stage crew eject a fan from his Tuesday night (June 24) concert in Auburn, Wash., after seeing the man assault a woman who was in one of the front rows. A video of the incident surfaced Wednesday at several Internet sites.

McGraw was performing his 1994 hit, "Indian Outlaw," when he stopped singing and yelled, "Get rid of this guy! Security!" At that point, McGraw knelt down and began pulling the man onstage. Members of his stage crew showed up immediately to assist McGraw.

Ernest Jasmin, pop music writer for the The News Tribune in Tacoma, Wash., described the incident in a blog posted on the newspaper's Web site.

"It wasn't immediately clear from where I was sitting that the encounter was hostile as McGraw struggled to pull this big boy onstage, nearly ripping the fan's 'wifebeater' T-shirt in the process before he and a couple of roadies successfully dragged the guy up and sent him reeling. The disoriented heckler got to his feet and took a couple of menacing steps toward McGraw with hand raised, prompting the country singer (not a small guy, for the record) to cock his own fist before crew members grabbed the would-be attacker and escorted him forcibly offstage."

The band played throughout the encounter. Ironically, when McGraw returned to singing the song, he began with the line that began, "I'm not lookin' for trouble."

In his blog, Jasmin wrote, "And to the country star's credit, he jumped right back into the groove without missing a beat, as smoothly as if the scuffle was a planned part of the show."

In a prepared statement, McGraw's Nashville-based publicist, Jessie Schmidt said, "While Tim was performing at the White River Amphitheater in Auburn, Wash., last night, he watched a man rush to the front of the stage. This overly aggressive fan attacked a female fan, and Tim witnessed this incident. Tim called for security, but when they could not respond quick enough, Tim and several crew members removed the fan from the audience where he was then turned over to the local authorities."