Hoochie Pooch Rescue

10/02/2026

For you, a hermit crab’s lifespan is measured in months. Your kid picks one out at a beach souvenir shop. Its shell is painted to resemble SpongeBob’s freckled face. Dutifully, you buy accessories. To the shoebox-sized tank, you add some sand, a plastic palm tree, a little dish of water with a sponge, and a sprinkling of food pellets. The crab proves an unsatisfying pet. It barely moves. It curls into its shell when you approach. One day, there is a smell.

Hermit crabs were meant for so much more. They are social creatures, who can live for decades in the wild—the hermit crabs for sale on the boardwalk were all plucked from beaches. A dedicated group of crab activists rescues crabs that are abandoned at the end of summer, spending thousands of dollars on spacious "crabitats" filled with enrichment activities like climbing walls and swings, as well as specialty food. One woman is even trying (and succeeding!) at breeding hermit crabs, with the hope that someday, we'll regard the humble crab as a pet akin to a dog, or even an exotic bird: a pet with a rich life, that takes time, resources, and dedication to care for.

Read more about America’s most misunderstood pet—and the humans are fighting to change their fate: https://slate.trib.al/MjxLkDz

09/13/2026

Oh, to be a coyote napping on a warm rock at Saguaro National Park.

Coyotes are built for desert life. These adaptable canines are most active around dawn and dusk, when Arizona temperatures are a little more forgiving.

They’re also opportunistic eaters, dining on everything from rodents and rabbits to insects, fruit and whatever else the Sonoran Desert puts on the menu.

Photo by Paige Wilton

08/29/2026

08/23/2026

This one bothers me.

A Nevada hunter and social-media personality has publicly announced his intention to travel to Wyoming this September and kill 1090F, the 12-year-old matriarch of Yellowstone's Mollie's Pack.

Not simply a wolf. That wolf.

1090F is believed to be the oldest living wolf in the Yellowstone area. Mollie's Pack traces its history back to the original 1995 Yellowstone wolf restoration and is Yellowstone's oldest pack. This year, the pack moved outside the protection of the park and denned in Wyoming's Shoshone National Forest.

And that's where things get complicated.

Once those wolves leave Yellowstone, they're subject to Wyoming wildlife regulations. Wolf Hunt Area 1 opens September 15. Wyoming has authorized a combined quota of four wolves in Hunt Areas 1 and 2. The state declined requests to close the area to protect Mollie's Pack. So yes: a wolf can be legally hunted there.

But that's not really the debate this story raises for me.

The hunter, posting under the name Kyri Ranch, reportedly announced: “The matriarch 1090F is going down on the 15th of September.”

That's different from a hunter encountering a legal animal during an established hunting season.

He's publicly identifying one particular animal. An exceptionally old wolf. A collared, extensively observed animal with enormous research value. The matriarch of a historically important Yellowstone pack. And he's apparently making her the objective.

I'm not anti-hunting. Ethical, science-based hunting has a legitimate place in wildlife management.

But I think hunters themselves should be willing to ask where the ethical line is.

Does having the legal right to kill an animal automatically make deliberately targeting that particular animal ethical?

Interestingly, some hunting and wildlife voices in Wyoming are questioning the tone of this too. The Wyoming Wildlife Federation told Cowboy State Daily that hunting should be grounded in science-based wildlife management and that wildlife should be treated with respect.

There's another piece of context worth knowing.

Wyoming actually cut its 2026 wolf hunting quota by more than half after the northwest Wyoming wolf population fell to a 20-year low following a canine distemper outbreak.

So this isn't a story I want to turn into hunters versus wolf lovers.

Most hunters aren't traveling across state lines to kill a famous wolf because they saw her on social media.

This is a much narrower question. Wildlife management tells us what we're allowed to take. Hunting ethics help us decide what we should take.

And sometimes those aren't exactly the same thing.

If you want to help... https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=1614370757147508&set=a.199748841943047

08/08/2026

08/04/2026

For two weeks, keepers at Tokyo's Tama Zoo hosed down their lions, ran fans around the clock, and pumped them with medication — trying to keep them alive through Japan's brutal summer.

Three of them didn't make it.

Mugi was 3 years old. Ichigo was 11. Ruena was 15.

All three lionesses died between July 28 and August 2 at Tama Zoological Park in western Tokyo.

Autopsies found severe dehydration and multiple organ failure — the signs of heatstroke.

The trouble started on July 18, when two lions stopped eating.

Within four days, 10 of the zoo's 16 lions were sick enough to need treatment.

On July 23, the zoo shut down the exhibit and pulled its famous Lion Bus off the route.

Here's what makes this unprecedented: Tama Zoo has kept lions since 1964 — and in 62 years, it had never lost a single one to heat.

Lions come from sub-Saharan Africa. Heat is supposed to be the one thing they can handle.

But western Japan just logged its hottest mid-July since records began in 1946, and even the lions' indoor quarters hit 86°F — in a building never designed to cool animals that weren't supposed to need it.

The zoo is rushing in portable coolers, and several of the surviving lions are still being treated.

The exhibit stays closed indefinitely.