Good Morning MOTleyville, It's Wednesday May 15th, 2013
MOT is here every morning @ 6:30 am.
The Morning Rescue Story.
Veteran Police Officer Dane Natto and his partner arrived on the scene, and Natto tackled the tree, climbing up to get the cat. But the cat saw the cop coming and climbed higher, as did Natto. Finally, the officer admitted defeat. He then realized that he, too, was stuck in the tree—some 30 feet off the ground.
A growing audience, including elementary schoolkids from PS 213, watched the fiasco unfold.
“We looked out the window, and we saw the cop inside the tree—sitting,” Luna Giuong told the Post. “[His] partner was laughing at him."
He stopped laughing long enough to call the New York Fire Department, which, writes the Post, “couldn’t believe what they were hearing.”
When the NYFD arrived, “they didn’t go straight to helping him,” Giuong recalled. “They all gathered around and laughed at him. They took their time."
Budget cuts hamper monitoring volcanoes
Scientists monitoring Alaska's volcanoes have been forced to shut down stations that provide real-time tracking of eruptions and forgo repairs of seismic equipment amid ongoing federal budget cuts — moves that could mean delays in getting vital information to airline pilots and emergency planners.
The Alaska Volcano Observatory can no longer seismically monitor five volcanoes with real-time equipment to detect imminent eruptions. Such equipment is especially important in helping pilots receive up-to-the-minute warnings about spewing ash that can cause engine failures and other problems.
Alaska has 52 active volcanoes, with many of them located on the Aleutians Islands along international air routes between Europe, North America and Asia.
Alaska Airlines officials said the observatory, funded by the U.S. Geological Survey, provides a crucial service, including early warnings of seismic changes that may portend an impending eruption. Monitors need to be operating all the time, not just during major eruptions, said Betty Bollert, an Alaska Airlines dispatcher.
Man tells his story of a bear attack
Joe Azougar was sitting on the front porch of his cabin this weekend with his new German shepherd puppy, Ace, when he "started to hear a vibration or thunder and I turned around to see a bear."
The next few minutes were pure mayhem and panic in which the bear killed the dog and then came back for Azougar, smashing through a cabin window to get at him and mauling him so bad that Azougar said he could feel the bear's teeth on his exposed skull.
When the bear showed up, "The first thing that the dog did was protect his master and attack the bear…I heard howling and barking," he said.
Azougar ran into his 8-by-16 "off-grid" cabin and began to call neighbors, alerting them on what was going on.
"As I looked around I saw him [the bear] drag my lifeless dog Ace into the bush," he said. But suddenly, the bear was back and it broke through the cabin's back window.
"It took my dog and then it came back to kill me. It had death in its eyes," Azougar said.
ABC's saves dad
A 5-year-old Newark, NJ boy became a hero after he used quick thinking and A-B-C skills to save his father’s life last week.
The two were driving home from buying Nathaniel Dancy Jr. school shoes when Nathaniel Sr. suffered an aneurysm and stroke, making him violently ill, according to a report by New York’s NBC Channel 4 News. (NBC reported his name as Nathaniel Darcy, but Nathaniel Jr.'s school, the public North Star Academy Charter School, confirmed for Yahoo! Shine it was Dancy). He was able to pull the car over, but then got out of the car, vomited, and became paralyzed by a seizure. That’s when Nathaniel Jr., who is in kindergarten, sprang into action, grabbing his dad’s phone and calling his grandmother.
"He said, ‘Come and help me and my daddy. We’re in trouble,’” Susan Hardy-Blackman told NBC New York. She asked him where they were, and, though her grandson was unable to read the sign on the store they were in front of, he spelled it for her: F-U-R-N-I-T-U-R-E. But she was still confused. And that prompted the young boy to be persistent well beyond his years.
“He said, ‘Grandma, use your active listening skills,’” she said. “‘Listen to the words that are coming out of my mouth.’” He gave her another clue, that they’d just gone through a tunnel, and Hardy-Blackman was able to go to them, where they were parked in front of a furniture store, and send an ambulance there, too.
Joe Biden at it again
It might not be unusual for schoolchildren to write to the president or vice president. But one Wisconsin boy got an unexpectedly personal response.
The 7-year-old, second-grade student at Downtown Montessori Academy wrote a letter to Vice President Joe Biden and other officials a few months ago with a simple idea for making the world safer.
His teacher Jenny Aicher says his letter suggested that if guns shot chocolate bullets, no one would get hurt.
The student — and the rest of the school — got a surprise Monday when Biden's handwritten response arrived in the mail.
In the note, the vice president says he agrees that chocolate bullets would make the country safer and happier. The note concludes: "People love chocolate. You are a good boy, Joe Biden."