Subscribe | UPI Odd Newsletter Subscribe Orangutan gets loose in Taiwan KAOHSIUNG, Taiwan, May 24 (UPI) -- Zoo officials fired a stun gun to bring an end to a table-tossing spree by an orangutan in Taiwan Wednesday. Advertisement The primate pushed his way out of his cage at the Shaoshan Zoo in Kaohsiung and wandered into a nearby restaurant courtyard where he overturned picnic tables and motorbikes, sending diners scattering, CBS News reported. "It was so close, my fiend pulled me away from the orangutan immediately when it approached me," said one woman. Once he was disabled, the orangutan was carted off for treatment in the scoop of a small bulldozer. The incident occurred at the same zoo where six weeks ago a 440-pound crocodile bit off the forearm off a veterinarian. Surgeons were able to reattach the limb. Injured whales lost in river delta SAN FRANCISCO, May 23 (UPI) -- Marine animal experts in California are still trying to coax two lost humpback whales back to sea. Advertisement A rescue team plans to use recordings of underwater noise Thursday to try to lure the mother and her calf from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, the San Francisco Chronicle said Wednesday. Animal experts have been banging on metal pipes for the past few days with little success. Officials believe the animals were injured when they were run over by a boat. They have barely eaten in more than a week and their skin has become pitted and ragged. "They're injured, they're not moving as fast as we hoped and the wounds aren't healing," marine mammal biologist Trevor Spradlin said. The newspaper said the whales apparently made a wrong turn during their annual migration north. They will have to swim 70 miles to get back to the Pacific Ocean. 'Lawn Guyland' accent mired in history NEW YORK, May 23 (UPI) -- Speech experts have an historical explanation for why New York's Long Island residents can't help but tell others they're from "Lawn Guyland." Newsday reported Wednesday that, according to experts nationwide, the famed Long Island accent can be traced to the 1600s when residents embraced the British standard of treating word-ending R's like vowels. Experts say like most accents, the Long Island dialect adapted as time went on and even incorporated in each individual's personality. Advertisement "Language has so much to do with social identity," Stony Brook University linguistics professor Marie K. Huffman said. "As a teenager, you often have the will to explore linguistic identities and then you decide what kind of adult you're going to be." But no matter where the unique accent originated, local residents such as Mindy Ferrentino Wolfle say there is still the stigma attached to the New York dialect. "If I sound very Long Island, I don't sound very smart," Wolfle told Newsday. "I know it's insulting to think that, but it's about perception, not about reality." Wild cat no match for elderly Utah woman CEDAR CITY, Utah, May 23 (UPI) -- A 75-year-old Utah woman recently became so frustrated with local animal control officials she caught a marauding wild cat by herself. The Spectrum in St. George, Utah, reported Wednesday that after animal control officials refused to take action against the feral cat that had tried to attack Nola Burkitt of Cedar City, the elderly woman took matters into her own hands. With her own money, she bought a $55 cage and in no time, she had caught the pesky feline. "Animal control wouldn't do a damn thing about it," Burkitt said afterward. "That should be their problem, dealing with wild animals, not (mine)." Advertisement While animal control officer Lisa Haller downplayed Monday's incident, saying "he's a wild cat, but he's not a rabid cat" that looks like Morris the feline of TV commercial fame, at least one other citizen compared the apprehended animal to a 1989 horror film feline. "It looks like something out of 'Pet Sematary,'" resident Jason Murray told the newspaper. "It needs to be euthanized, there's no doubt about that."
