Animal Deaths

In the wee hours one morning in 2006, the trawler Infidel sank off the southern end of Santa Catalina Island, taking several tons of squid and a 9,000-pound fishing net down with it. The Infidel came to rest on its keel, about 150 feet under the sea. But in the turbid currents, the fine-mesh hemp and polypropylene net -- 40 feet high, several hundred feet long and made to last thousands of years -- wrapped itself around the wreck and became a deadly snare for marine life.

For years, two Central Coast animal sanctuaries run by the Dancing Star Foundation had reputations as good places for old and ill animals. Care was unstinting, the facilities well-kept and the budget ample. But over the last few months, economic declines have forced layoffs at the sanctuaries near Paso Robles and Cayucos in San Luis Obispo County. Even worse, some former workers said, Dancing Star began to euthanize cows, horses and burros whose care was deemed too expensive.

Hundreds of gulls were killed or maimed in Cleveland after what investigators believe was cooking oil spewed from a sewer pipe into the Cuyahoga River. Investigators said Friday that several hundred gallons of the substance killed or disabled hundreds of gulls near the Kingsbury Run tributary. Most of the birds are just downstream from the site where environmentalists last week celebrated the Cuyahoga River's comeback since floating oil and debris caught fire on June 22, 1969.

A mysterious die-off of hundreds of crows throughout New York state has been linked to the avian reovirus, a pathogen that has threatened the poultry industry in the past, relentlessly sweeping through flocks, state wildlife officials said Thursday. The virus is not likely to jump the species barrier to infect humans. However, state health officials are taking no chances, and scientists at Wadsworth Center, a division of the state Health Department, were studying the virus.

When Sarah Harper took her cat, Pete, to Banfield, the Pet Hospital, she was encouraged to sign up for one of the company's "optimum wellness plans." For an enrollment fee of $69.95 and $16.95 in monthly payments, Harper was told, Pete would receive regular vaccinations and exams, as well as discounts on a variety of medical services from the nation's largest chain of veterinary facilities. "They were talking about 'wellness' and 'healthcare,' " she said. "It seemed like insurance." It wasn't.

The California Coastal Commission argued in federal court Tuesday that President Bush violated the U.S. Constitution by trying to overturn a court order that restricted the Navy's use of a type of sonar linked to the deaths of marine mammals. The commission's attorneys said Bush's move to exempt the Navy sonar training exercises in Southern California waters from federal law violated the Constitution's separation-of-powers doctrine.

After months of criticism -- and three lawsuits -- about the shelters operated by the Los Angeles County Department of Animal Care & Control, the agency's director appeared before the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday to defend her stewardship. Los Angeles County Supervisor Yvonne B. Burke had asked director Marcia Mayeda, in December, to prepare a report on the Carson shelter, after Burke's office was inundated with complaints.

It was a frightening sight. A horse that moments earlier was leading a race lay dead on the track, the victim of a heart attack, and his jockey, 25-year-old Rafael Bejarano, was crumpled in a heap next to the rail as medical personnel rushed to the scene. "The first thing you worry about is the health of the jockey," Kathy Walsh said Friday. "There's always another race."

A herd of horses trotted onto the 91 Freeway in Corona early Monday, causing two collisions that killed one of the animals, forced authorities to close the road for roughly five hours and left three motorists with minor injuries. The horses, about a dozen in all, escaped from Hart Ranch and a neighboring property and bolted several hundred yards in the predawn darkness to the freeway, near Green River Road, said Donna Hart, co-owner of the ranch.

When 13 horses line up for Saturday's Preakness, horse racing will hold its collective breath. The sport absorbed a devastating blow two weeks ago at the 134th Kentucky Derby, when Eight Belles suffered a fatal breakdown moments after she finished second to champion Big Brown. It was the third death in two years of a thoroughbred who had run in a high-profile race -- the others being Barbaro, months after his 2006 Preakness injury, and George Washington in last year's Breeders' Cup Classic.