Uncle John's Creature Feature Bathroom Reader For Kids Only! Read online

  ADOLF HITLER (1889–1945). The Nazi dictator was scared of cats, but liked dogs. He had a German shepherd named Blondi that he trained to climb a ladder, jump through hoops, and sing.

  DUMB ANIMAL TRICKS

  Sometimes animals act just like humans…stupid.

  OH, DEER!

  The Storliens of Marietta, Minnesota, got the surprise of their life when they woke up one morning and found two “deer” lying in the front yard with their antlers locked together. One was a real deer, injured and struggling. The other was the Storliens’ life-size concrete lawn ornament. Apparently the real deer spotted the fake deer during the night and challenged it to a duel. He charged, locked horns and knocked the lawn ornament over. Guess that showed him!

  TRASH COMPACTOR

  Did you hear about the bull terrier who swallowed a bottle cap, some Saran Wrap, a toy car, and some wire? The dog was rushed to the hospital, where doctors had to operate to remove the trash. In the recovery room the dog was put on an IV drip. When he woke up…he ate the IV tubing.

  WHAT’S BLACK AND WHITE, BLACK AND WHITE, AND BLACK AND WHITE?

  Answer: a herd of angry zebras kicking a minibus. The bus full of students was touring through a game park in Kenya when the enraged herd surrounded it and attacked. The driver finally got the kicking zebras to cool it by pouring bottles of water over the beasts’ heads.

  AND THE WINNER IS...

  PICKIEST EATER. The Australian koala eats only eucalyptus leaves—and not from just any tree. It sorts through 500 species of eucalyptus to find one of the 36 types it likes. A pound and a half of eucalyptus leaves later, this fellow is full.

  BIGGEST FARTER. The regular old farm cow blasts out more than 105 pounds of methane gas a year. Count all the cows around the globe and that adds up to billions of pounds of gas. Talk about air pollution!

  FASTEST RUNNER. The cheetah wins the gold medal, paws down, reaching a top speed of 70 miles an hour. Run, Spot, run!

  SLOWEST MOVER. The three-toed sloth of South America wins this award with a land speed of six to eight feet a minute.

  BIGGEST SLEEPYHEAD. The koala again. It snoozes for 22 hours a day. But the two-toed sloth is a close second, clocking 20 hours of z’s a day.

  SMALLEST MAMMAL. The Kitti’s hog-nosed bat (also called the bumblebee bat) weighs a minuscule .07 ounces—about as much as a peanut!

  DEADLIEST MAMMAL. Lion? Tiger? Cape buffalo? Hippo? Grizzly bear? Wrong on all counts. It’s man.

  WAGS TO RICHES

  LUCKY DOG

  Toby was a standard poodle who lived in a mansion in New York City. He slept on silk sheets on a miniature four-poster bed in his own bedroom. He even had a personal butler to serve his meals (his favorite: lamb chops). When his owner, Ella Wendel, died in 1931, she left her little darling $15 million. That’s oodles for one poodle!

  FAT CATS

  When Dr. William Grier of San Diego, California, died, he left $415,000 to his 15-year-old cats Hellcat and Brownie. A third cat, Charlie Chan, got $250,000—all to himself.

  STRONGHEART

  Before there was a Lassie or an Air Bud, he was the first great dog star.

  In 1920 a Hollywood director and animal trainer named Lawrence Trimble discovered a German shepherd named Strongheart in Germany. Trimble took Strongheart home to try to turn him into a movie star.

  Trimble was an unusual trainer. He didn’t use treats as bribes to get Strongheart to perform. Instead, he read newspapers, books—even poetry—to the dog, and insisted that no one ever use baby talk with Strongheart or talk down to him. His training method was odd…but it worked.

  At home Strongheart acted more like a human than a pet. He learned to help make his bed, arrange the furniture, put away his own toys, and even wash the car.

  In 1921 he was ready for his first movie, The Silent Call. Strongheart became an instant star: thousands of fans would gather to see him when he toured the country. He made seven movies and was the biggest animal star of the 1920s. He even had a dog food named after him (it’s still available today). Heading to Hollywood soon? Go to 1724 Vine Street. There you’ll find a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame…and all it says on it is “Strongheart.”

  ANIMAL CRACKERS

  Two cows met in a field and started talking.

  “Moo,” said the first cow.

  “I was just about to say the same thing!” said the second cow.

  When his mother returned from the grocery store, little Jason pulled the box of animal crackers out of the bag and dumped them all over the kitchen counter.

  “What on earth are you doing?” his mom asked.

  “The box says you can’t eat the cookies if the seal is broken,” the boy explained. “I’m looking for the seal.”

  Q: How do you catch a runaway dog?

  A: Hide behind a tree and make a noise like a bone!

  Q: What do you call a chicken at the North Pole?

  A: Lost.

  Q: What is a twip?

  A: A twip is what a wabbit takes when he wides on a twain.

  Q: Why do cows wear bells?

  A: Because their horns don’t work.

  Some kindergartners were on the playground when a fire truck zoomed past. Sitting in the front seat of the fire truck was a Dalmatian. The children started arguing about the dog’s duties.

  “They use him to keep the crowds back,” said one kid.

  “No,” said another, “he’s just for good luck.”

  A third kid brought the argument to a close. “You’re both wrong. They use the dog to find the fire hydrant.”

  BIG KAHUNA!

  Hippos in West Africa have come up with a cool way to travel—they surf! Every evening the hippos of Loango National Park in Gabon come out of the jungle and ride the breakers down the beach to the grasslands for dinner. After eating as much as 150 pounds each, they surf back up the beach to their sleeping grounds.

  Experts guess the hippos take to the ocean because floating in the surf takes a big load off their feet—the average hippo weighs about 6,000 pounds!

  WILD AND WOOLLY FACT

  Hippos look like they’re sweating blood. That’s because they secrete a sticky pink liquid to protect their sensitive skin. It doubles as a sunblock and moisturizer.

  BIG MOUTH

  DID YOU KNOW?

  • A hippo’s head can weigh 1,000 pounds.

  • A four-foot-tall child can stand up inside a hippo’s open mouth.

  • A hippo’s eye can see above and below the water at the same time.

  • A hippo’s skin is so thick (1 ½ inches) that most bullets can’t penetrate it.

  MOST DANGEROUS ANIMAL IN AFRICA

  Every year more people in Africa are killed by hippos than by all other animals combined. They’re particularly dangerous in rivers, where they capsize boats. A hippo can run twice as fast as a human and can cut a crocodile in half with a single bite!

  ROCK-A-BYE BABY

  Shh! Some pretty incredible things are happening in the wild nursery.

  ZEBRAS are born with brown stripes.

  PORCUPINES are born with soft quills (lucky for Mama)! The quills start to harden an hour after birth.

  CAMELS are born without humps.

  ELEPHANT babies suck their trunks the way baby humans suck their thumbs.

  POLAR BEAR babies weigh only about one pound, yet they can grow to weigh as much as a car.

  GIANT PANDA babies are the size of a stick of butter when they’re born.

  KANGAROO babies are smaller than your finger. The inch-long baby, called a joey, must crawl to its mother’s pouch, where it will continue to grow into a fully developed baby kangaroo.

  MOM OF THE YEAR

  Lions eat gazelles, right? Not Kamuniak, an unusual lioness living in Samburu National Park in Kenya.

  In 2002 Kamuniak turned the natural order of the animal world upside down when she adopted a baby oryx. An oryx is a type of gazelle and is usually the favorite dish of lions and other predators.
But Kamuniak, who had no cubs of her own, began to lick and clean the orphaned oryx calf like a newborn cub. Worried rangers returned the calf to its mother. To their astonishment, Kamuniak promptly adopted another newborn oryx calf.

  Kamuniak (which means “Blessed One” in the Samburu language) guards her calves from other lions and otherwise treats them like one of her own. So far she’s adopted six in all. The baby gazelles stay with the lioness until they’re strong enough to run away and rejoin their herd.

  Meanwhile, Mama Kamuniak and her “babies” have become the most popular attraction at the game park, drawing visitors from all over the world.

  SUPER DADS

  Most baby animals are raised by their moms, but there are a few amazing dads in the animal kingdom.

  TAMARINS win the title “Fathers of the Year,” hands down. No other male animal takes care of its babies like these South American monkeys. Dad even helps Mom during labor. After the babies are born (she usually has identical twins), he gently washes the little ones and returns them to their mother. For the first few weeks Dad takes care of Mom while she tends the kids. Then Dad takes over full-time, teaching them everything they need to know to survive. But he’s careful to return them to their mother every few hours for meals.

  RED FOXES are great fathers, too. They bring food to Mama fox while she nurses. When the pups get older, Dad teaches them how to forage by hiding food. He teaches them how to fight by playing. And when it’s time for them to leave home, Dad kicks them out. But just in case Junior isn’t ready to be on his own yet, he always leaves some extra food just outside the den. Way to go, Dad!

  RUN WITH THE PACK

  There are some very creative names for groups of animals. Can you guess them?

  What do you call a group of GIRAFFES?

  a. rise

  b. tower

  c. stand

  Answer: b. tower

  What do you call a group of TIGERS?

  a. ambush

  b. growl

  c. gang

  Answer: a. ambush

  What do you call a group of ZEBRAS?

  a. pattern

  b. herd

  c. dazzle

  Answer: c. dazzle

  What do you call a group of SQUIRRELS?

  a. scurry

  b. scramble

  c. run

  Answer: a. scurry

  What do you call a group of HIPPOS?

  a. blob

  b. bloat

  c. flotilla

  Answer: b. bloat

  What do you call a group of OTTERS?

  a. mischief

  b. romp

  c. giggle

  Answer: b. romp

  What do you call a group of RHINOS?

  a. army

  b. platoon

  c. crash

  Answer: c. crash

  What do you call a group of APES?

  a. meeting

  b. shrewdness

  c. mob

  Answer: b. shrewdness

  ANIMAL CRACKERS

  An elephant was drinking from a river when he spotted a turtle asleep on a log. The elephant ambled over and kicked the unsuspecting turtle across the river.

  “Why did you do that?” asked a passing giraffe.

  “Because I recognized it as the same turtle that took a nip out of my trunk 47 years ago.”

  “Wow, what a memory!” said the giraffe.

  “Yep,” said the elephant. “Turtle recall.”

  Earl: I just bought a pet zebra.

  Pearl: What are you going to name him?

  Earl: Spot.

  Q: What do you call a well-dressed lion?

  A: A dandy lion (dandelion).

  Q: How does an elephant get down from a tree?

  A: He sits on a leaf and waits till autumn!

  Q: What do you get if you cross a leopard with a plum?

  A: A spotted purple people eater!

  Q: What did the judge say when he saw the skunk in the courtroom?

  A: “Odor in the court!”

  ZOO STORIES

  Monkey See... A chimp named Feili spent too many hours people-watching at the zoo in Zhengzhou, China, and picked up a human habit that’s really hard to kick—smoking. For years, Feili smoked all the cigarettes she could find on the ground. When she ran out, she begged visitors for more. If they said no, Feili flew into a screeching rage and spit on them. Happily, Feili finally kicked the habit in 2005.

  Big Is Beautiful. Maggie is a 22-year-old African elephant at the Alaska Zoo who’s fighting the battle of the bulge. She weighs 9,120 pounds—that’s 3,000 pounds more than the average female elephant. Even with daily walks around the zoo, Maggie couldn’t shed those extra pounds. So the zoo built Maggie her very own treadmill. Now she gets up in the morning and works out, just like her zookeepers.

  DUMB DOG TRICKS

  TEED OFF

  A Labrador retriever named Meatball had a monstrous stomachache and was rushed to the vet for an emergency operation. Meatball, who should have been named Meathead, lived near a golf course…and had scarfed down a record 23 golf balls!

  BRAIN FREEZE

  In January 1935, a collie was stranded on a piece of ice on Lake Michigan. Rescuers tried to coax the dog to safety but she wouldn’t budge…until they offered her some pork chops. She promptly dove into the freezing water and swam to shore, where she ate the pork chops. Then she jumped back into the icy lake and swam back to her iceberg!

  STUCK ON YOU

  Dempsey the Doberman had to have his jaws separated after he ate an entire tube of superglue.

  FELIX THE CAT

  Felix and his master, Thomas Lynan of St. Kilda, Australia, were inseparable. When the old man died, the black-and-white kitten was inconsolable. For five months, he hardly ate and spent his days and nights wandering the house looking for Mr. Lynan. Worried that Felix would die of grief, Lynan’s daughter took the cat for a drive to cheer him up. When the car stopped at an intersection just outside of town, the cat, who had been lying limp in the back seat, suddenly leapt out the car window and ran off. The family searched everywhere for Felix but couldn’t find him.

  Days later, when Lynan’s daughter went to visit her father’s grave at Melbourne Cemetery ten miles away, she found Felix on the gravestone, marching back and forth like a sentry. She tried to take the cat home but he kept jumping out of the car and racing back to Lynan’s grave. “In the end,” she told a newspaper reporter, “we decided it would be kinder to let Felix stay behind.”

  Weeks later the reporter drove by the cemetery to see if Felix was still there. Sure enough, the black-and-white kitty was still standing guard over his master’s grave.

  HERE KITTY KITTY

  A few cat facts to keep you feline fine.

  MUMMY’S THE WORD

  In ancient Egypt, cats were worshiped as gods. When they died, cats were mummified and taken to the temple of the cat god, Bastet. The Egyptians even mummified mice for the cats to take along as a snack in the afterworld.

  DID YOU KNOW?

  • A black cat is considered unlucky in America…but lucky in Great Britain.

  • White cats with blue eyes are usually deaf.

  MAMA CAT

  The Weller family in Cranbook, British Columbia, woke up one morning to find their cat, Patches, nursing two baby mice. Patches already had seven kittens of her own. “I don’t know where she found them,” Mrs. Weller said, “but for some reason she brought them in instead of killing them.” Good kitty.

  LOOK OUT BELOW!

  Gros Minou, a two-year-old orange-and-white cat from Quebec, holds the world record for surviving the longest fall. Gros Minou fell 200 feet off a 20th floor balcony into a flower bed. Amazingly, the lucky feline limped away with only a broken pelvis.

  MISTER ED

  A horse is a horse of course, of course, and no one can talk to a horse, of course. That is, of course, unless the horse is the famous Mr. Ed.

  Mister Ed was a hit TV show in t
he 1960s that starred a “talking” horse named Mister Ed (his real name was Bamboo Harvester). This smart horse could do most of his own stunts, like opening the barn door and answering the telephone. What he couldn’t do was talk. That was accomplished with a nylon bit which pulled his mouth open or by feeding him a peanut butter–like substance that made him chew.

  Like many Hollywood stars, Ed could be difficult to work with. When he was tired, he’d just walk off the set. And when he got bored, he’d cross his back legs and yawn. When he was hungry, all shooting stopped while he strolled over to his bale of hay for a snack. That’s star power!

  WILD AND WOOLLY FACT

  On occasion Ed’s stunt double was a zebra!

  MORE RATS

  ALL IN THE FAMILY

  The San Carlos, California, health department got a call from horrified residents who reported seeing large rats eating the curtains in the window of a neighboring condo. Investigators found hundreds of rats running all over the house…even under the bedcovers. The owners’s explanation: the rats were pets. “They have the bedrooms,” the wife explained. “We sleep on the living room couch.”