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sixtiesrule
| Joined: | Tue Apr 29th, 2008 |
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#1 Posted: Fri Feb 26th, 2010 06:20 am |
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Schoolboy helps mum deliver baby sister in Queenland
Boy helps mum through labour
- Takes instructions over the phone
- Delivers baby girl
AN 11-year-old Queensland boy has delivered one of his mother's premature twin babies.
Rohan Townsend delivered one of his sisters with instructions from a paramedic over the phone early this morning after his mum went into labour 12 weeks early at their Sunshine Coast home.
An ambulance crew took mum Amanda Sullivan and the new arrival to Nambour General Hospital after being called to the the family's Bli Bli home at 6.50am (AEST), the Department of Community Safety said.
Ms Sullivan's second daughter was delivered at the hospital and both girls have since been transferred to the Royal Brisbane Hospital.
Australian Medical Association (AMA) Queensland president-elect Dr Gino Pecoraro said Rohan had performed an amazing feat for such a youngster.
"What an amazing young man," he said.
"How difficult and scary it must be for an 11-year-old to come face to face with his mother having twins and not only twins, but early twins.
"He certainly should be congratulated as are at least our emergency services people who guided him through that on the phone."
Dr Pecoraro said he'd be happy to help Rohan become an obstetrician.
"When he finishes high school and grows up and does medicine if he wants to be an obstetrician get him to give us a call and we will get him on the training program," he said.
Ms Sullivan, who checked out of Nambour Hospital yesterday, is in on her way to Brisbane to be reunited with her daughters.
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And a not so nice story:
Florida killer whale to stay in park after deadly attack
A killer whale that killed its trainer in front of horrified onlookers will stay in its marine park, officials said, amid a raging debate on keeping such animals in captivity.
Tilikum -- the five-tonne orca already linked to two other human deaths since 1991 -- grabbed its veteran trainer by her ponytail and dragged her down into its tank at the end of Wednesday's show in SeaWorld Orlando, Florida.
The male whale was so aggressive rescuers could not immediately jump in and assist the experienced trainer Dawn Brancheau, officials said.
Instead, trainers guided the massive black-and-white whale toward a smaller pool and lifted him out of the water by a large scale or platform to free Brancheau's dead body from its jaws.
Witness Sue Nichols, 67, said the crowd had had no warning that anything was brewing as the show was already ending with most of the 50-strong audience having left their seats.
The trainer would "pet him, and she would get very close to him. She'd throw fish in his mouth and throw buckets of water in his mouth, which he seemed to enjoy. There was nothing aggravating or anything about it," Nichols told AFP.
But then, "she was petting the whale and talking to him, and then all of a sudden he just reached up. He got her in the water, and he took her underwater, and he had her under for quite a while," she said.
"He came up out of the water, and he had her in his mouth."
Nichols said an alarm sounded while park employees scattered around the pool with a net as audience members were rushed away.
Animal rights groups and activists pressed for Tilikum to be released in a controlled area, while some suggested putting him down.
But both ideas were ruled out by SeaWorld staff.
"He's still going part of this family group here in Seaworld," SeaWorld Parks and Entertainment corporate curator Chuck Tompkins told AFP.
"He's got seven other killer whales that he lives with and we'll make sure he stays with his family ... We are going be very careful how the trainers interact with him. The number one focus is still the safety of the trainers," he added.
But SeaWorld did not say if it was considering more live shows with the 22-foot (6.7-meter) long, 12,000-pound (5.4-tonne) animal.
Even before the latest deadly attack, trainers were barred from swimming in the water with Tilikum, standing on platforms instead.
In a grim twist, the smaller pool was apparently the same spot where the naked body of Daniel Dukes was found draped over Tilikum's back in July 1999 after he sneaked into SeaWorld after hours to swim with the animals.
The Orange County Medical Examiner's office said Brancheau, who had 16 years of experience working with orcas, likely died from multiple traumatic injuries and drowning.
Brancheau, 40, died doing something she loved, her mother said. "It was her dream to do it," Marion Loverde told the Orlando Sentinel. "She loved her job."
In an prescient 2006 interview, Brancheau told the newspaper: "You can't put yourself in the water unless you trust them and they trust you."
Russ Rector, a former dolphin trainer, said keeping killer whales -- the largest species of the dolphin family -- in captivity can make them become violent.
"They are going to keep Tilikum and he is going to kill someone else," said Rector, who warned SeaWorld in November 2007 that continued captivity could cause the marine mammals to attack their trainers.
"He is a monster, he is a product of captivity. He hates people. All he wants to do is kill you," Rector told AFP. "If this was a big cat or a bear, it would have been put down after its first kill."
Naomi Rose, a marine mammal scientist with The Humane Society, suggested Tilikum, known simply as "Tilly," be released in an open ocean sea-pen the size of a football field.
"He could be trained to adjust to going out into the open ocean to exercise and get more choices and then maybe his stress would be reduced," she said.
A full release might be complicated for Tilikum, who has been captive for nearly 27 years and whose name means "friend" in the Chinook Jargon language spoken among native Americans in the Pacific Northwest.
"You can't just put Tilly back out into the wild," renowned animal expert Jack Hanna told AFP. "It takes months and years of planning to do that."
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dahls
President Wannabe
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#2 Posted: Fri Feb 26th, 2010 02:37 pm |
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A very happy ending and a very sad one. Kids amaze me with what they can do when they have to help out. As for the other story i dont know i have nothing against some animals being in zoo's and so on but a whale is one i dont believe should be in these places. While i know some animals have no choice for suvival reasons to be kept in captivity and i agree with this....... but treat them as a wild animal they are not breed for doing tricks or playing with for human entertainment.
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JohnB
Ensign
| Joined: | Tue Apr 14th, 2009 |
| Location: | Las Vegas, Nevada USA |
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#3 Posted: Fri Feb 26th, 2010 04:31 pm |
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The first story is awesome! The second story i have to agree wild animals are not pets that should be trained for our entertainment and they will and can turn at any given time its sad what happened but when you play with fire this is what can happen.
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