Mcnorman's Weblog

The cairn terrier mix pup disappeared from his home on the far West Side at the end of November, was reported dead and had almost overstayed his welcome at Animal Care Services this week when his owner found him.

Sounds to me like someone let him go?

But Gutierrez said his friendly attitude won her over. He became a big part of her life, dragging her out of the house to get exercise that she needed as much as he did. So she was very upset when Stevie escaped Nov. 29 and days later, when her landlord told her he was dead.

“This is my Christmas miracle,” said Belinda Gutierrez, who thinks Stevie is about a year old. “I actually thought I was going to have a sad end of the year and a sad Christmas.”

Yes, this is a miracle.  Good luck to the little fellow.

But thanks to Craigslist, an animal-loving schoolteacher and efforts by ACS to find Stevie a place to spend the holidays, Gutierrez picked him up from the shelter Thursday.

And to make this heartwarming story of a puppy making it home in time for Christmas with his family even more so, Stevie’s not just any puppy. A veterinarian told Gutierrez her dog was born without eyes, she said, and he showed signs of abuse when her daughter found him wandering around a duck pond at Marbach Road and Ellison Drive early this year.

via A happy ending to the tale of blind pup.

Endangered and in high demand, now there is a shortage.

At the Top of Texas Catholic Superstore in Amarillo, owner Moneisa Thompson said she noticed one-ounce packages of frankincense disappearing from displays in her 3,800-square-foot store about four months ago. She has since moved the packages into a glass case.

A boswellia tree, which produces frankincense, in Yemen.”We’d go through the count and we’d come up one or two short,” Ms. Thompson said. “We had to put it under lock and key.”

For many Christians, frankincense is best known as one of the gifts—along with gold and myrrh—that the three wise men brought to Jesus and his parents shortly after he was born. The resin still is prized for its fragrance and used in some religious ceremonies.

The incense comes from the resin of the boswellia, a stout, gnarly-branched tree that mostly grows in the Horn of Africa. But encroaching agriculture and insects threaten to kill off most of the region’s boswellia within the next 50 years, according to a study published this week in the Journal of Applied Ecology by a team of Dutch and Ethiopian ecologists.

via A Shift for the Magi? Frankincense Shortage.