Animal Deaths

Anaheim Lake provides fun for anglers, but for nearby residents, life has gotten too fishy and smelly lately. "They drain the lake every year," said Erica Kimbrough, who lives in the Vistara housing tract. "They leave the fish rotting and decomposing, and there's a horrible odor that permeates the entire neighborhood." Kimbrough said one child has taken ill, and other residents, including two pregnant woman, have complained of headaches.

Federal researchers say an infectious and lethal cold-loving fungus sweeping through parts of North America and Canada has killed millions more bats over the last five years than previously estimated. The rapidly spreading fungus responsible for white-nose syndrome is now believed to have killed 5.7 million to 6.7 million bats, a count several times higher than earlier estimates, across 16 states as far west as Oklahoma. The fungus, which scientists know as Geomyces destructans, seems to prefer the 25 species of hibernating bats.

His groom beckoned, and Easy Goer came running with the stride and grace that made him a champion. Then he died. The 2-year-old champion of 1988, remembered for an intense rivalry with Sunday Silence, died Thursday in Paris, Ky. He was 8. "His groom was showing some people around on a tour," Shug McGaughey, who trained Easy Goer for Ogden Phipps in 1988-89, said from his home in Garden City, N.Y. "He whistled for him and he came running down. He put a shank on him and let him out of the paddock.

A former Los Angeles County assistant fire chief was sentenced to three years' probation Friday on animal cruelty charges for beating a puppy with a 12-pound rock, injuring it so severely that it had to be euthanized. Glynn Johnson, 55, of Riverside also was required to do 400 hours of community service working with dogs, take anger-management classes and serve 90 weekend days in jail. He could have been given four years in prison, and the sentence was immediately denounced by those hoping for more jail time as a "slap on the wrist."

I was disgusted at Lopez's cavalier comparison of the heinous crimes committed by the prison guards at Treblinka to wild animals killed on roadways. Lopez has provided yet one more example for extremists who continually deem the taking of innocent human and animal life morally equivalent. Lopez should immediately apologize to all concentration camp survivors and their relatives for his grossly insensitive remarks. BRUCE A. FISHER Long Beach

The return of fur to the world's fashion catwalks has spelled death to thousands of endangered animals with a boom in demand for their skins, a top wildlife protection officer said Friday. John Sellar, senior enforcement officer for the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, said there had been a surge in seizures of tiger and leopard skins as the fashion industry embraced fur once again.

Conditions at the National Zoo improved during the last year, but a number of weaknesses remain, a report released Wednesday by the National Academies' National Research Council says. After several animal deaths in early 2003, Congress asked the council to conduct a yearlong review of the zoo's flagship Washington facility and its Conservation and Research Center in Front Royal, Va. The report said "more than a decade of decline in almost every aspect of zoo operation" preceded the deaths.

The Los Angeles Zoo paid a federal fine of several thousand dollars in the wake of a U.S. Department of Agriculture investigation into the 2006 deaths of the zoo's popular female Asian elephant, Gita, and a chimpanzee, Judeo, zoo officials confirmed Monday. Gita was found down in her enclosure early one morning in June 2006 and could not be saved despite extensive veterinary intervention.

Visit the National Zoo these days, and the scenes are of summer as usual: A camel blinks slowly in the sun as it lounges on a bed of straw, the giant pandas munch blissfully on bamboo as staff members track a possible pregnancy, and swarms of children in shorts and sneakers crowd in for a glimpse of the seals' acrobatics. But in recent months, the zoo's behind-the-scenes activities have been attracting far more attention, much of it unwanted, than its animal stars.

First, a Masai giraffe, an elegant and quiet crowd pleaser, died at the National Zoo. That was in February. Then, another Masai giraffe died in September. One day later, a gray seal died. Still, officials at the zoo -- a sylvan setting between the urban downtown and tree-lined residential neighborhoods -- found nothing out of the ordinary. Typically, several of the zoo's 3,000 animals die each year, they said. But the mortality continued. In October, a white tiger was euthanized.

The mysterious pelican malady that left hundreds of the birds sick and stranded along the Oregon and California coasts this winter was probably caused by a combination of bad weather and fish shortages related to El Niño, state Department of Fish and Game officials said Monday. After ruling out such potential causes as disease or marine toxins, a group of scientists from state and federal agencies, nonprofit groups and Sea World in San Diego concluded that a simple scarcity of pelican prey, such as anchovies and sardines, probably combined with winter storms to produce flocks of hungry, wet, soiled pelicans, dying on beaches or looking for handouts.

All along the Oregon coast over the last month, hundreds of brown pelicans have turned up dead, starving or begging for food. As many as 1,000 of the gangly seabirds failed to make their annual fall migration to California, many instead winding up at Oregon's rehabilitation centers. Those that did head south, leaving the Pacific Northwest winter behind, were battered by California's recent storms. Shelters in San Pedro and the San Francisco Bay Area are also full of emaciated pelicans.

A retired Los Angeles County assistant fire chief was found guilty of animal cruelty Tuesday after punching a neighbor's puppy, breaking its jaws and beating it with a rock, an attack that eventually led to the death of the 42-pound dog. "Karley, this one's for you!" a tearful Shelley Toole shouted outside Riverside County Superior Court after the verdict was read. "This is for you, girl!" Glynn Johnson, 55, faces up to four years in prison on animal cruelty charges for killing Karley, a 6-month-old German shepherd mix that prosecutors said was the victim of a long-running feud between Johnson and the Toole family.

Manuel A. Sanchez has ruled out every logical explanation for the fate that has befallen the calves on his ranch in southern Colorado. Over the past month, he's found four calves dead in a way that he cannot reconcile with anything in his 50 years of raising cattle: eyes and ears missing, tongues and genitals excised in what appeared to be a series of fine cuts. Mountain lions, bears or coyotes would leave messier marks, he said. And Sanchez found no tire tracks or footprints that would suggest a human invader -- nor even bloodstains he'd expect to find around the carcasses if someone had butchered them.

She was the spy who was undone by a furry little creature with huge, hypnotic eyes. It was the early 1980s, and a young Madagascan scientist named Hanta Rasamimanana had been dispatched by her pro-Soviet government to spy on a group of Americans working in the private Berenty Reserve in the southern part of the country. Instead of finding out what the Americans were really up to, she fell in love with the creatures they were studying: lemurs. Rasamimanana remembers how, on her first mission as a researcher-cum-spy, she paid more attention to American primatologist Alison Jolly and her comments about the primates than to her bosses' orders.

Death is a sad but common part of thoroughbred racing, but in California the sight of medical vans on racetracks was a grim reminder that this state had problems far greater than others. In May 2006, the California Horse Racing Board, whose job it is to ensure fair and safe racing in the state, identified the dirt surface as a problem. It mandated that all the main thoroughbred tracks install what was believed to be a much safer synthetic surface by the end of the following year.

Riverside firefighters responded twice within 12 hours to two separate blazes in a house packed with debris where more than two dozen dogs died of smoke inhalation, authorities said Wednesday. In both blazes, which broke out Tuesday evening and early Wednesday morning, firefighters had difficulty entering the single-story home and moving around inside because it was jammed with furniture and boxes filled with clothes and other items. "They were faced with pack-rat conditions," said Division Chief John Martinez of the Riverside Fire Department.

The howls that echoed through Griffith Park on Monday were coming from hikers, parents and nannies -- not coyotes. Park visitors were furious with a decision to shoot coyotes in the 4,210-acre park following an encounter between a man and a coyote last week. Eight animals were killed before the eradication effort ended at 10:50 p.m. Friday, said Kyle Orr, a spokesman for the California Department of Fish and Game. Park visitors blasted the hunt as overkill. They blamed the problem on people who illegally feed coyotes.