The nation's fleeting attention was caught today by a story about a Florida woman who was surprised to discover a full-sized alligator nonchalantly wandering around in her kitchen looking for treats. For her troubles, the woman in question—Ms. Sandie Frosti—gets an all-expenses-paid trip to New York to do the talk-show circuit, so everything turned out OK for her.

But what's to become of old Andy the Alligator? Well, according to local authorities, our reptilian friend, who is believed to be a grown-up from a group of baby gators that the neighbors used to feed in the pond, has been bound up and is awaiting slaughter, which will probably come via a knife or ax to the spine, so that he can be paralyzed before they skin him alive to make shoes, belts, and bags out of him.

Which is pretty much the price that animals who don't pass the "cute and cuddly" test always tend to pay in these situations. There's going to be plenty of yukking it up about Ms. Frosti's wacky experience during the talk-show fluff pieces tomorrow morning, so I figured at least somebody should tell the alligator's side of the story. If nothing else, maybe it'll at least serve as a reminder never to buy exotic skins.

I love this:

“Police arrested a 28-year-old man Sunday on a cruelty to animals charge after he yelled an obscenity at a police dog in a patrol vehicle, according to an arrest affidavit. … Police say Rogers yelled an obscene statement in the window as he walked past a patrol vehicle that contained a patrol dog “causing (the dog’s) behavior to become overloaded, tormenting the dog,” the affidavit states.”

Full story here.

It's time for your WTF of the day, this one courtesy of Trinity Christian Academy in Jacksonville. Evidently, a biology teacher at the school invited students to attend an after-school session in which he fed a live rabbit to a student’s pet python. The teacher dangled the helpless animal in front of the snake and moved her from side to side to encourage the snake to attack. A video of the vicious little act was posted on YouTube, presumably so that other students around the country can be desensitized to animal suffering as well. You can check out some of the press coverage here, and we've written a letter to the school asking them to make humane education a priority at Trinity Christian Academy and enclosing a "Kindness Kit" (look, I didn't come up with the name, OK?) with some handy tips, educational videos, and information on how to teach kids to interact with animals—like not killing bunnies in the frickin' classroom, for a start. You can read that letter here.