For some reason there seems to be at least one internationally noticed news story each year about a human biting a dog. Last year it involved a 65 year old man named Pappan [1] in the Quilon district of India (who wants to pronounce the name of the state capital “Thiruvananthapuram”?) who bit a dog after it attacked his duck…this year the story is less bizarre [2]:
An 11-year-old boy is enjoying a flash of fame in Brazil after biting a pitbull that attacked him as he played in his uncle’s back yard, local media reported on Thursday.
Gabriel Almeida, who lives on the outskirts of Belo Horizonte in the state of Minas Gerais, broke a canine tooth when he bit into the dog’s neck to fend off an attack. Since then, he has been pampered in the studios of several TV stations, where he has been recounting his ordeal.
However unlike last year where the villagers only took over after both the man and dog were exhausted, the boy at the centre of this year’s story was rescued by bystanders. Unfortunately Reuters make it sound like the bystanders rescued him because he reached a four stitches threshold:
He was freed when bystanders pulled the dog off him and needed four stitches in his arm.
I have a rather amusing recording of Clive Robertson talking about last year’s story and another story about a dog eating all of the pies in a pie-eating contest after a “Mr. Williams” left the pies unattended for ten minutes. I had to listen to it again after reading this year’s story.
Samuel