This is a tense week! If you feel like taking a break, you might enjoy some thinking about some events in the world of animal companions.
Today's Guardian, for example, has the tale of Barney, the doberman pinscher guard dog, and the teddy bears he was guarding.
It turns out that teddy bears can be very, very expensive. Well over 50K for a former bear of Elvis's, for example. And Barney appears to have had a brain storm.
See below:
This is Barney sitting among the rubble caused by his frenzied attack on 100 of the Teddies:
As the Guardian reports
Barney went on to rampage through hundreds of rare teddies, all on loan to Wookey Hole Caves in Somerset, and so valuable that the insurers had insisted on a guard dog to protect the premises at night. The aftermath, according to shocked staff, was appalling: shattered limbs, gouged eyes, ears torn off, and pools of sawdust everywhere.
"Up to 100 bears were involved in the massacre," Daniel Medley, general manager of Wookey Hole Caves, said last night. "It was a dreadful scene."
...
Staff were still working last night to restore the display, which is expected to reopen this morning.
The hound dog will not be present.
"We have asked the security firm not to send us that dog again," Mr Medley said. "I really don't want to see anything bigger than a Jack Russell."
And then, of course, there are the pooties.
First, pooties coping with the extreme heat wave in NYC:
And Boris:
or even more beautifully
who is being written up in the NY Times and elsewhere, since his person wants a summer cat sitter.
[and many thanks to pj who supplied two of these]