Dog Kidnaps Infant

Not all our dog stories are happy like the tale of the one who survived a barbecue fork in the skull or the one who tracked down its owner in KY a decade after being lost in FL, or the ones who get to be Mayor of Rabbit Hash.

According to the Associated Press:

A father was frantically calling 911 to report his missing newborn when he spotted the baby, bleeding from the mouth and clutched in the jaws of a family dog who had carried him from his crib to the heavily wooded backyard.

Four-day-old Alexander James Smith was rushed to the emergency room at University of Kentucky Hospital in Lexington, where he was listed in critical condition Tuesday with two collapsed lungs, a skull fracture, broken ribs and various cuts and bruises.

Smith said he and his wife, Chrissie, had just put Alexander James (or A.J.) in his crib Monday afternoon in their Nicholasville, Ky., home. Smith said he was preparing to leave for the store to buy various baby items, including a video monitor that he now believes could have prevented the entire ordeal...

Smith, who is the owner of a corporate security business where his wife also works, said the dog was treating the baby as a puppy and wasn't being vicious. Still, he doesn't want her back in the family home.

Dakota was taken into custody by animal control, and although Smith remains hopeful a good home can be found for her, he acknowledges the animal may have to be destroyed.

Kentucky soldier's remains found in Korea after 59 years

In 1949, 17-year-old Beattyville resident Lloyd Stidham joined the Army, lying about his age and telling them he was 19 in order to qualify.

On November 27, 1950, he was reported missing in action in Korea, two days after being captured by the Chinese. He was never seen or heard from again.

But half a century later, in 2000, a joint team of Americans and North Koreans led an investigation to a place overlooking the Kuryong River in P'yongan-Pukto Province where U.S. soldiers were long believed to be buried. The area was excavated, and sure enough, human remains were found.

American scientists from the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command and the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory used dental work, circumstantial evidence, and DNA analysis to identify as many of the soldiers as possible. The work took several years, but earlier this month, the Department of Defense finally announced that the remains of Lloyd Stidham and three other soldiers had been conclusively identified.

On April 13 Lloyd Stidham will be interred at Camp Nelson National Cemetery in Nicholasville.

400 Mile Yard Sale Across Kentucky

I live for yard sales, flea markets, junk stores, auctions, trading posts, antique malls, and such. And in this economy, "secondary market" stuff is quickly becoming primary.

So it should come as no surprise that you'll find me somewhere in all the hubbub of the 400 Mile Yard Sale across Kentucky.

The sale follows Highway 68 (though there's always plenty more yard sales going on in the periphery each year) from Maysville to Paducah and hitting all points in between - including Paris, Lexington, Nicholasville, Wilmore, Harrodsburg, Danville, Gravel Switch, Lebanon, Campbellsville, Glasgow, Bowling Green, Cadiz, Hopkinsville, and Benton. Yee-haw!


(By the way, Catclaw Theatre is having a yard sale this weekend at 2107 Lakeland Road in the Anchorage area of Louisville. Come on down and say howdy! And if you can't make it, make a donation!)

New MRSA Strain in Jessamine Co.

Uh-oh. Just saw this on FOX News:

West Jessamine High School junior Ryan Robinson was placed on life support at the University of Kentucky Hospital after being diagnosed with methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus — or MRSA.

The Lexington Herald-Leader reported that was confirmed by Sam Pile, who coaches the youth's soccer team.

Pile said Robinson played well Thursday, but said his mother said the boy fell ill that night. His ailment was first diagnosed as influenza, but MRSA was later discovered.

Jessamine County Schools Superintendent Lu S. Young said the school and the Career and Technical Center have been thoroughly cleaned.

MRSA, aka Necrotizing Fasciitis, aka the "Flesh Eating Bacteria", stands for "Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus aureus", and it's seriously scary stuff. Just a few weeks ago, ABC News ran a story about how some say it's becoming a dangerous new sexually transmitted disease, and is increasingly being treated as an epidemic. The Mayo Clinic says:

Most MRSA infections occur in hospitals or other health care settings, such as nursing homes and dialysis centers. It's known as health care-associated MRSA, or HA-MRSA. Older adults and people with weakened immune systems are at most risk of HA-MRSA. More recently, another type of MRSA has occurred among otherwise healthy people in the wider community.

That new wider-ranging superstrain is known as Community-associated MRSA, and is apparently what we have here in Nicholasville.

Just how swift and how scary is it? Well, this teen was healthy and playing soccer in the afternoon. By evening, he was severely ill. By morning, he's in critical condition.

Nicholasville bankrobber holds up wrong building

From the Lexington Herald-Leader, Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2009:

NICHOLASVILLE — A would-be armed robber left empty-handed Tuesday after realizing that his intended target was no longer a bank but the office of a local water district.

About 1 p.m. Tuesday, a man entered the office of the Jessamine South Elkhorn Water District at 802 South Main Street — formerly a branch of Farmers Bank — showed a revolver and demanded money, Nicholasville police spokesman Scott Harvey said.

Harvey said an employee told the man, "We really don't have any money."

Harvey said the robber responded: "I know you have money. It's a bank."

But he was told, "No, sir, it's not a bank anymore."

"He looked around, realized it wasn't, and he left with nothing," Harvey said.

No one was hurt in the robbery attempt.

The water district has been in the former bank building since Dec. 15, said Diana Clark, office manager for the water district.

Kentucky Contactees

It's difficult to assess the impact of the alien abduction phenomena in any given area because people are so reticent to talk about their experiences. I've met with many people who are absolutely convinced they have been abducted by aliens, but are unwilling to tell their whole story, much less submit to hypnosis, testing, etc. They seek no fame or glory or attention, and are in fact often too embarrassed by it to go into much detail. Therefore, they don't turn up in the casefiles of most online armchair UFO enthusiasts. But they are indeed out there.

Abduction counselor Donald Worley writes of his encounters with abductees from Kentucky and Indiana who display a demonstrable ability to disrupt "electron flows" in any given electronic devices nearby. Driving or walking under street lights may cause them to go on or off. Radios, computers, all manner of electronic equipment can be affected by whatever is happening to these people. The energy coming from these abductees, Worley says, is undetectable yet obviously causing an effect, and seems to be intermittent.

An organization called SOAAR, (Southern Ohio Alien Abduction Research) also deals with cases from nearby Kentucky, which they publish on their website. One such case, "Mark" (name changed), tells of alien encounters throughout his life, from a childhood UFO encounter in Nicholasville to visitations in his dorm room in Morehead, to a visitation with missing time somewhere between Lexington and Mt. Sterling. Another SOAAR casefile, Louisville subject "Danny" (also not his real name), underwent regressive hypnosis to recall his abduction experiences in which he and his mother are captured by aliens in a triangular craft, stripped naked, and held prisoner together in a strange room aboard the vessel.