Cockatoo

"Tips and Information On Preventing Umbrella Cockatoo Problems!" Type in Umbrella Cockatoo in the search engines and you'll probably find a site like Wikipedia who wants to tell you all about the tiny little country the Umbrella Cockatoo comes from, how long it's feathers are, it's scientific name and a few pictures.

But what they don't tell you about is how to raise and train them so they don't turn out to be little hellions once they reach sexual maturity around the age of 3-5.

So I'm going to spare you all that stuff you could find in any decent encyclopedia, and just give you the stuff you REALLY need to know about raising the Umbrella Cockatoo -- so let's get started! First off you need to understand that most Umbrella Cockatoos are little angels up until reaching sexual maturity. They're more affectionate then any other breed of Cockatoo, or any breed of parrot for that matter, and present virtually no behavior problems.

That's why Umbrella Cockatoos are so popular! People see them in the pet stores, they've never seen a cuter, gentler species of parrot in their life, and think they'll be that way forever. And the stupid greedy pet store owner usually fails to mention any follow up training instructions, and just sells them some crappy $9.95 book that they claim has all the answers.... NOT!

Threats to Polar Bears

Polar bears are in serious danger of going extinct due to global warming. The bears were the first vertebrate species to be listed by the U.S. Endangered Species Act as threatened by extinction primarily because of global warming. This listing happened in 2008 because of the ongoing loss of critical habitat for polar bears, the arctic sea ice on which they live and depend to hunt their almost exclusive prey, seals.
Rising temperatures in the world’s oceans are causing sea ice to disappear for longer and longer periods during the late summer, leaving polar bears insufficient time to hunt. This is a worldwide problem, and the Endangered Species Act has listed polar bears as threatened everywhere in the world they occur. Polar bears can only survive in areas where the oceans freeze, allowing them to hunt seals living under, on, or in the frozen polar ice cap.

Polar Bears

Polar bears are large bears. They have strong legs with large, flattened feet with some webbing between their toes that help with walking on ice and swimming. The wide paws prevent sea ice from breaking by distributing weight while walking. The webbed feet results in making polar bears, unlike other bear species, considered to be “marine mammals” along with seals, sea lions, walruses, whales and dolphins. Taxonomically, however, they are still bears. They evolved 1-3 million years ago from the brown or grizzly bears, which still eke out a marginal life along the northern shore of the arctic oceans.

Play Treatment

First of all, playful attacks are not accompanied by vocalizations--hissing and growling. A natural reaction to being grabbed or bitten, even playfully, is to swat at the cat. Don't do this! Physical punishment may cause your cat either to fear you or to engage in even rougher play. If your cat becomes afraid of you, you may face a bigger problem--that of defensive aggression. If the attack can be anticipated, a blast of air from a compressed air can (obtained from a photography store), a squirt from a water gun, or the noise of an audible alarm or a shaker can (an empty soda can with pennies in it) may discourage the behavior if produced at the moment of the attack. Timing is everything. If "fired" a second or two after the incident, the deterrent will not be connected with the attack in the cat's mind and no training will take place, although the cat may be frightened and confused.

Aggressive Kittens

Owners are often frightened by playfully aggressive cats and kittens because they look quite dangerous. They silently ambush feet and ankles as they pass by, surprising, upsetting, and sometimes, even hurting, the victim. In some cases the cat owners have inadvertently trained their cat to be a feline terrorist by playing with it as a kitten with their hands or feet. Now that the pet is bigger and stronger, those playful pounces and bites puncture the skin. The solution is to direct the cat's playful, predatory, energies toward toys instead of body parts.

White Lions

The White Lions are South Africa's pride and joy, our living national treasure. Or so they should be. All over the African continent, from Egypt in the North to Bushmanland in the South, legends of the White Lions existence grace ancient oral traditions and cave paintings. From the distant Nile culture in the North to Zululand's Valley of a Thousand Hills in the South, storytellers spoke of the arrival of these legendary animals.

In Senegal in the West, and Somalia in the East, legends proclaim the White Lions magical powers. Yet there is one place only on earth where these mythical creatures have come to life - and that is Timbavati, a wildlife region bordering on South Africa's Kruger National Park.

The name Timbavati in the ancient Shangaan language means "the place where something sacred came down to earth - like a bird or angel from the heavens!" So the site of their origin echoes the White Lions' mythical status - a place which saw the birth of a unique breed of snow- white lions with blazing solar manes, and laser eyes!

My great Shangaan teacher, the indigenous healer known as the Lion Queen of Timbavati, Maria Khosa, first introduced me to the mystery of the White Lions.

This amazing woman proved her own lion-hearted courage by rescuing me, on foot and at night, from a resident pride of angry lions in the Timbavati bushveld. Maria's ancient knowledge, and her lion-hearted actions, changed my life. Maria believed that the White Lions are "Lions of God - who came from the stars." Like that other sacred site, Great Zimbabwe, the clue is embedded in the word Timba-vati: Tsimba - means 'lion'. Accordingly, this is the site where angelic winged lions were believed to have come down to earth.

That other great African teacher, pre-eminent Bushman and Zulu shaman, Credo Mutwa, describes the White Lions as 'Children of the Sun God' - a title which I used for my book which pays homage to these legendary animals. Old African knowledge teaches us that the White Lions are 'enlightenment-bearers' - not white as in skin colour, but white as in pure sunlight. The White Lions emanate sunlight which, afterall, is all the rainbow colours of the spectrum. As such, the White Lions are the living icon for our rainbow nation – beyond colour, creed or race.

Living legends
What science has established is that these unique animals are not albinos, but genetic rarities which manifested by natural occurrence. The White Lions should be venerated as a rare sub-species, yet they are not even listed for CITES protection.

At the World Summit of Sustainable Utilisation, where I was a guest speaker, I had occasion to sit next to a distinguished envirolawyer from Senegal, who informed me in reverential tones that the White Lions were spoken about by elders in his West African community, as ancestral beings of the highest order. He told me that they are believed to be angelic creatures - Mondoro - who only take on physical form on earth, at a time of ecological crisis. This squares with the beliefs held by the South Africa's indigenous priesthood.

Whether or not one upholds ancient African legend, the fact is that the White Lions have taken on physical form - and the world is in unprecedented ecological crisis. The conclusions of many at the World Summit in 2002, was that if we continue to degrade our planet at the present rate of consumption, there will not be another World Summit in 2012. The opinion expressed to me by geologist, Dr John Anderson, is that we humans are in the process of bringing about the Sixth Extinction on earth which, unlike previous extinctions such as that of the dinosaurs, will see biodiversity loss from which there will be no recovery for our species.

Hand-in-hand with the degradation of the earth's last resources, goes the extermination of the earth's indigenous people and their invaluable earth knowledge and cultural beliefs - beliefs that venerated the White Lions as guardian spirits over the land and its protection.

Play With your Cat

We can take the cat out of the jungle, but we can't take the jungle out of the cat. There is a little tiger in every house cat, a solitary predator, that needs to exercise its hunting skills on a regular basis. We may have confined this little tiger within four walls, provided it with the finest of feline foods, but we can't ignore its basic need to do that for which it was so perfectly designed--to hunt. Fortunately, it is not always necessary for the prey to be alive, but it must move.