One of my favorite “almost” headlines of all time was the one I spotted as an editor several years ago while working at a weekly paper. Thank God I caught it before we went to press:

“Senator seek funds for wild life support.”

The senator, of course, may have loved his “wild life” but he was (at least publicly) a supporter of “wildlife” — a distinction with a difference and a typo that would have given me untold ribbing had it seen the light of day.

In June 2008, wildlife has been making my own life pretty wild on the job. Multiple times in the past week animals have played major roles in interesting stories.

– There was the story of a kitten that climbed into the inner workings of a van and had to be rescued, not once but two days in a row — in the same parking lot in Alton. Twice, Alton animal control officers had to be called in to free the kitten and the second time captured it so it didn’t keep them on the run.

– The same day we heard the story of a goose shot with an arrow and later rescued by a wildlife sanctuary in St. Louis where it is being restored to health.

– A couple of days later we did a story on the plight of TreeHouse Wildlife Center in Brighton, which is desperately in need of a new home — and for the funds with which to pay for it. The coverage included a terrific picture of a fish being tossed into the mouth of a waiting pelican.

Most readers, fond as they are of animals, loved the stories. A few other readers were sent to howling. Some people, I guess, would rather read what “important” stories.

I cut readers a break. On the same day as the kitten story was developing we also heard that Alton officers were also called out: for a cat stuck under a car at Target; to rescue abandoned baby raccoons; and to find — unsuccessfully — a cow that was supposedly loose somewhere in city limits.

The latter stories you never saw, but I’m sure they would have made for good tales, had we had the energy, time and space to tell them.

It all made for an interesting week — and I’m not even going to get into the blacksnake that apparently crawled into a substation and triggered a brief power outage for several thousand people in Alton and Godfrey last Thursday night.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 12th, 2008 at 5:50 am and is filed under Main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.