Page 7 - ATD 23OCT,2015

U.S. NEWS A7
Friday 23 October 2015

The road to Kitten Bowl III paved with unspeakable cuteness

LEANNE ITALIE These goal posts were son in real life. He’s got
two, but his heart is gold
Associated Press scratch-worthy, and invited for the felines. This is his
second Kitten Bowl, with a
NEW YORK (AP) — How do guests got to lob cat toys twist this year: He fielded a
team of his own — Boom-
you wrangle a bunch of fur- onto the field to keep the er’s Bobcats — in addition
to performing his duties as
ry paw-thletes on a kitten- action moving. No Gato- commissioner.
“I sat with my team and I
scale football field? With rade on the sidelines, just a said, ‘Look guys, I need you
to go out there, play with
a tiny little ball on a string couple of well-frequented cuteness and cuddliness. I
want you to be as furry as
dangling from a great big water bowls and litter box- you possibly can. I want to
hear a lot of meows. I want
TV camera. es — and plenty of human to see a lot of touchdowns.
I want to see a lot of climb-
The Hallmark Channel, with spotters to redirect escap- ing on the uprights,’” Esia-
son said.
help from host Beth Stern ees trying to jump off the So what are the Vegas
odds on the Bobcats?
and Feline Football League elevated set. “Right now we’re a 2-to-
1 favorite,” Esiason joked,
Commissioner Boomer Es- Stern, an animal welfare denying any influence
peddling. “I’m above all of
iason, taped Kitten Bowl III advocate, North Shore Ani- that.”q

on Wednesday, ahead of mal League spokeswoman

broadcast on Su-purr Bowl and wife of Howard Stern, Kittens play on a mini football field during the taping of “Kitten
Sunday, otherwise known is a cat mama herself with Bowl III,” on Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2015, in New York. The pro-
as Feb. 7. Howard’s enthusiastic as- gram will be broadcast on The Hallmark Channel on Super Bowl
And the best part: The near- sistance. He gets to name Sunday, Feb. 7, 2016.

ly 100 feisty, four-legged new cat pets (they’ve got (AP Photo/Leanne Italie)

players, all rescues, will find six) and the many rescues bring home from Wednes- what’s a better cat toy
homes well before game the two foster, including a day’s taping. than Howard’s hair?”
day thanks to North Shore handful of adorable fur- “He helps me socialize Esiason, on the other hand,
Animal League America. balls his wife planned to the kittens. He plays with an NFL most valuable play-

Idaho agency finds historic lost them. They crawl in his er and four-time Pro Bowl
hair,” Stern said. “I mean, quarterback, is a dog per-

footage of parachuting beavers

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — More adventures unharmed.
Fish and Game historian
than half a century after Sharon Clark recently un-
covered the fragile film,
a group of beavers para- which had been misla-
beled and stored in the
chuted into the Idaho wrong file. It has been digi-
tized and released on You-
backcountry, officials have Tube by the department
and the Idaho Historical
uncovered video of the Society.
Trapping and transplanting
quirky wildlife manage- beavers still happens today
— but in less dramatic fash-
ment moment. ion.
“We haven’t done airplane
The Idaho Department of drops for 50-plus years, but
it apparently worked pretty
Fish and Game was strug- well back then to re-estab-
lish them in remote plac-
gling with an overpopu- es,” said Steve Nadeau,
Fish and Game’s statewide
lation of beavers in some fur bearer manager.
The agency now moves
regions in the 1940s when beavers to the Owyhee
desert, in the state’s south-
wildlife managers settled west corner, to help restore
vegetation stripped away
on a novel idea. They cap- by years of watershed use.
Nadeau says the goal is for
tured beavers and other beavers to make ponds in
the region, which can hold
furry rodents, packed them water year-round.q

into special travel boxes,

attached parachutes

and dropped them from

a plane into the Frank

Church River of No Return

Wilderness. The footage

made around 1950 and

dubbed “Fur for the Future”

showed the infamous bea-

ver drops, but it had long

been lost, Boise State Pub-

lic Radio reported Thursday

(http://bit.ly/1M8QE9U ).

Animal lovers, take heart —

it appears all the beavers

made it through their flying