oddly enough

oddly enough

Bear with head stuck in jar is rescued in Pa.

JAMISON CITY, Pa.

Four central Pennsylvania residents said they used only a rope and a flashlight during a wild chase to rescue a young bear whose head had been stuck in a plastic jar for at least 11 days.

The frightened but powerful bruin fell into a swimming pool at least twice during the ordeal, according to a report in the Press Enterprise of Bloomsburg. But the group eventually yanked off the jar and set the animal free.

“I thought, ‘No one is going to believe us,’” said Morgan Laskowski, 22, the bartender at the Jamison City Hotel and a member of the impromptu bear-wrangling team.

Area residents first spotted the 100-pound bruin with its head in a red jar June 3, but it eluded game wardens. The animal was attracted to the container because it appeared to have once contained cooking oil.

“He put his head in and had a problem,” said Mike Jurbala, 68, another rescuer. “He’d have died in a couple more days.”

Hitchhiking cat ‘Mata Hairi’ headed home to Oregon

HELENA, Mont.

A well-traveled cat named “Mata Hairi” soon will be reunited with her owner after spending nearly 10 months traveling thousands of miles with a hitchhiker who rescued her from the rain.

The feline adventure started in Portland, Ore., when the cat’s owner, Ron Buss, let her out of the house Sept. 1. The cat, white with patches of dark gray, usually left for no more than a couple of hours at a time, but this time she didn’t return.

When Michael King, who has been homeless since 2003, spotted Mata Hairi, she was crouched under a table at a cafe, trying to stay out of the pouring rain.

“I see cats all the time,” King said. “I don’t pick up cats. I don’t want a cat, especially a full-grown one.”

And he definitely didn’t want to haul around the needed food and bowls that would add 20 pounds to his pack.

“Something told me to grab her. I don’t know,” King told the Independent Record.

He named the cat Tabor, for the cafe where he found her.

She traveled with King as he hitchhiked to California, back to Portland and out to Montana, where King’s foster father lives.

People often stopped them and asked to take photos.

King and his foster father, Walter Ebert, recently took the cat to a veterinarian in Helena, where a scan found a microchip, and the vet was able to contact Buss.

Buss is planning a party marking Mata’s return, and King agrees it’s an occasion for celebration.

But it’s going to be emotional for King, too.

“I didn’t want a cat in the first place. I just thought I was saving someone’s cat,” King said. “And that’s what I’ve done. Now I’ve grown attached to her.”

Associated Press