Friday, January 13, 2023

Short Documentary: Guy Rescues Over 250 Cats from Trees...and One Coati


Came across this short documentary about a fantastic human, Patrick Brandt, who rescues cats from trees.

Patrick (at the time of the documentary) has returned over 250 cats that like to go places they shouldn't, until the consequences of their bad decisions strand them somewhere, safely to their stressed owners.

One day Patrick was called to get something not a cat...

If you're reading this blog?

You already know what that exception was...

A coati.




If you'd like to follow Patrick and watch the situations he has to get these cats out of?
Here are his socials:
Rescue My Cat Official Site
Rescue My Cat Facebook
Piedmont Tree Climbing
Cat in a Tree Rescue Directory (in case you need someone to call where YOU live)

Thursday, January 12, 2023

After 10 years of searching....Charlie Crowfoot and the Coatimundi has been posted to YouTube!

Way back in January of 2012, almost ten years to the day (the orignial post was put up on January 25, 2012), I wrote a post about the film, Charlie Crowfoot and the Coatimunudi.
At that time Disney had been putting metal-cased DVD sets out that featured much of the company's old television shows and specials.
As they were being released, Disney had publicly posted the contents of each of the upcoming releases in the series.
And on one of those listings was where I saw something I didn't know existed...
A film by Disney that featured coatimundi...
Charlie Crowfoot and the Coatimundi.

I've spoken/emailed folks over the years who've had relatives that worked on the film and one whose father even handled the coatimundis!
Communication with a couple of folks gradually diminished and the only person I'd interacted with whose father had a copy of the film, eventually ceased and I was back at square one...
Until just a few days ago when I decided it'd been a couple years and that I should give the search another try.
I search the title on YouTube knowing I'd probably be let down...
And I wasn't.
In fact when the search results came back? My I covered my open-mouthed reaction with my hand and my eyes went wide...
There it was posted online for everyone to watch the antics of a coati in a Disney film (Encanto also features coatimundis with some pretty accurate gremlin-like behavior)...
I promise this won't be one of those recipe posts where I discuss mt g-ma's cabin by the lake for twelve paragraphs...

Here it is...after 10 years of on-and-off looking...
Disney's Charlie Crowfoot and the Coatimundi
Enjoy!

(I'll be writing a longer post about this film and the search for it later in a few weeks)

Tuesday, December 13, 2022

Old Photo of David Attenborough with a Coati!

I'm always looking for old photos featuring coati in them.
Recently a VR experience featuring the man was on display in London.
An article talking about Attenborough shared several photos...
One of which made me and, if you're as much of a fan of the coati as I am, will probably make you smile as well.
A photo of the actor with his son...
And a baby coatimundi.

See the full story here: Yahoo! Sports

Coati Moves Into Mansion; Evicted Soon After


A mansion is Tucson (that asked not to be named in the original article because they didn't want the publicity...but I'm here to tell you it was probably the Franklin House) became the chosen residence for a wayward coati in November.
Something had been ripping up the lawn (coati can smell grubs up to 2ft into the ground) and causing some havoc to the gardens surrounding the mansion.
After learning that the culprit, who was doing a not-so-great job as a horticulturist on the mansion's grounds, was a coati, the animal control folks set up trail cams to see whether or not the animal was alone or part of a group. Once it was determined that it was a solo male, traps were set.
Almost immediately the coati went for the bait, found itself in a trap and eventually being released back into the wild at Catalina State Park nearby.
You can find the entire article here at Tuscon.com

Monday, November 14, 2022

Cody the Coati of Murfreesboro, Tennessee's Animal City

Something that has always fascinated me are animal stories.
Animals have been players in some of the biggest moments of human history.
And sometimes?
They play a part in some of the smaller moments...
Like a lttle coati named Cody in Tennessee.
Around 2009, Cody wound up at a pet store in Murfreesboro, Tennessee called Animal City.
Cody was yet another victim of the illegal animal trade. Animal City received him after coming from the Mississippi from an exotic animal breeder (whether legal or illegal I do not know...but I'm absolutely against the breeding of coatimundi for this purpose).
For 11 years Cody was something of a local celebrity with people coming to the pet store specifically to see the little coati.
Described as a lightning-fast pickpocket, Cody's life at Animal City came to a quiet end during a dental surgery he was undergoing.
I have not reached out to understand why Cody passed during his surgery but as someone with several years of animal experience, anesthesia can become risky with older exotics.
I think it's fantastic that a local paper picked up on the story of Cody and posted it for others to read.
His small part in the story of a big world is important to document.
To let anyone who might read this or the original article about Cody know he was here.
After all, as an animal trainer I respect once told me... "They're just little people in different costumes."


Read more about little Cody and just a small sampling of his 11 years worth of antics at Animal City here.

Wednesday, November 2, 2022

Peel Street Monster Updated!


One of the earliest posts on this blog was an entry about the "Peel Street Monster" that I'd read about in the magazine, Fortean Times.
At the time that it had been published, the internet was still in its infancy-ish stage. Information continues from humankind's collective history; things like old newspapers, newsletters and various periodicals are making their way online more and more quickly adding more information to stories we're already aware of.
One such story is that of the "Peel Street Monster" that I wrote about in one of the first posts on this blog back in 2009.
Since that time, the "Peel Street Monster" has also become known as the "Wolverhampton Monster". More information about the incidents surrounding the story have shown up in additional sources and a clearer picture of what actually took place from the moment the "monster" first attacked to its death at the hands of a teenager with a brick to the misunderstanding that it was allegedly attacking a baby (it wasn't) to being dumped in a gutter to discovering it was a female to discovering there was another coati as well that was never caught (which makes me wonder if that coati had anything to do with reports not long later of a troupe of coati a few miles from this story's location).
Author Thomas Fair has written a fantastic short article about this little moment in history...
A moment when one of the most interesting animals in the world became a monster...
And, like a lot of alleged monsters and misunderstood characters throughout human history?
Repeated a lesson that continues to haunt us...
Our primitive fear of what we don't understand.
A fear that, more often than not, has time and time again brought about violence against the innocent.
Like an innocent litle coatimund a long time ago whose only crime was being curious and unusual.

Saturday, September 3, 2022

Coatis Trapped in U-Haul Rescued


It's June in Cambridge, Massachusetts and someone is hearing noises coming from the inside of a U-Haul.
Upon closer examination?
They could hear birds sqwaking and chirping, but also something else.
Not long after making the call about the U-Haul, members of the environmental division of the local police as well as the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (MSPCA) arrived on the scene to force open the trailer.
What they found was typical of these types of heartbreaking animal rescue stories, particulary exotic animal rescues...
Locked inside the U-Haul were several birds, rats, chinchillas...
And four brown-nosed coatimundi.
All of the animal were housed in dirty cages.
The MSPCA put up all the other animals for hopeful adoption while the group tries to find an animal sanctuary or zoo that can take in the coatis.

I'll be calling the MSPCA to find out the situation with the coatis and update this story as soon as I can.

Link to the original story here.
Here's a video of one of the rescued coati.