Watch it all–so lovely (just over 3 minutes).

There’s only one problem: apparently none of it ever happened.

Yes, a version of that quotation was uttered by a pope, but it was said decades ago by Paul VI, who died in 1978. There is no evidence that Francis repeated the words during his public audience on Nov. 26, as has been widely reported, nor was there was a boy mourning his dead dog.

So how could such a fable so quickly become taken as fact?

Part of the answer may be the topic of the pope’s talk to the crowd that day, which centered on the End Times and the transformation of all creation into a “new heaven” and a “new earth.” Citing St. Paul in the New Testament, Francis said that is not “the annihilation of the cosmos and of everything around us, but the bringing of all things into the fullness of being.”

The trail of digital bread crumbs then appears to lead to an Italian news report that extended Francis’ discussion of a renewed creation to the question of whether animals too will go to heaven.

Read it all.

Barn No. 5 at Hilliker’s Ranch Fresh Eggs is about to become a state-of-the-art multiplex for hens. Two massive scaffolding-like structures, each the length of four school buses, are getting their final nuts and bolts, and in a few weeks, 8,000 cage-free chickens will come thronging and clucking into these new “aviary” roosts. Moving freely around the barn, they will perch on rows of shiny bars, nest on private mats, and quench their thirst from tiny water nipples. While one conveyor belt whisks chicken waste out the door, another one will collect the bounty ”“ a nonstop supply of brown and white eggs.

The roosts, which line both sides of the barn, are replacing dense rows of wire cages that housed chickens for some 60 years. Frank Hilliker, a third-generation egg farmer in this dusty town north of San Diego, strolls through the barn, hoists himself up to the top of the roosting tiers, and surveys the chickens’ new domain.

“Those are privacy curtains,” he says, pointing down at a strip of tomato-red plastic flaps. “Inside is a little AstroTurf pad that they get to lie on, and that’s where they lay their eggs!”

Read it all.

Tricolored Heron, Bull Island South Carolina (Selimah Harmon) pic.twitter.com/LZk2JUw6Pi

— Kendall Harmon (@KendallHarmon6) November 30, 2014

The long-billed curlew is as quirky looking as it is large. Its bill stands out like a jousting lance. The two-feet-tall bird is the largest shorebird on the continent – where it’s left on the continent.

That might not be in the Lowcountry much longer.

The only places it’s really seen here anymore are a few, very remote islands in Cape Romain. You’re lucky to see two at any one time. They are “probably going to disappear from our state,” said Felicia Sanders, S.C. Department of Natural Resources wildlife biologist.

Read it all.

Watch it and enjoy.

I loved there–check them out.

Warrior and Warhorse from The Seventh Movement on Vimeo.

Saratoga Springs, N.Y., famous for its historic racetrack, is among the most idyllic places in America. But on a recent fall weekend, not far from the track, horses were serving a different mission: retired thoroughbreds were recruited to help returning veterans at Song Hill Farm. A group from the US Army 2nd Battalion, 135th infantry, united in grief over the death of a fellow solider, gathered for the first time in five years to be part of Saratoga Warhorse, a three-day program that pairs veterans with horses. Tom Rinaldi reports the emotional story of the veterans, paired with their horses, undergoing a rebirth of trust and taking a first step toward healing.

Watch it all, and, yes, you will likely need kleenex–KSH.

[Stacy Pride’s dog] Paco died this fall, two years after her husband’s death. Pride wanted a special way to say goodbye to a special pet.

Although the family had buried earlier pets, this time she went to McAlister-Smith Funeral & Cremations to have Paco cremated. She picked out a simple copper urn to keep Paco with her family forever. Her daughters bought her a charm with Paco’s nose print because he loved to kiss with his nose.

With that, the family joined a growing number of pet owners scampering for the same kinds of services for pets that they long have relied on to mourn human loved ones.

Read it all.

Albert and Winnie Sami gave nearly $5 million to Zoo Miami on the condition that they remain anonymous until after their deaths.

Read it all.

Enjoy each one of them.

World Animal Day was started in 1931 at a convention of ecologists in Florence as a way of highlighting the plight of endangered species. October 4 was chosen as World Animal Day as it is the Feast Day of St Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of animals.

Read it all and check out the links.

Watch it all–adorable.

The fact that there are now two cowboy churches in the Fort Worth Stockyards is a sign of the times: Dozens of these churches have popped up in the last 15 years, constituting a rapidly growing constituency of new Western Christianity that embraces simple services over big-church productions.

Westby’s church is a nondenominational congregation with a relaxed, indoor service featuring lots of music and no formal sermon. Miller’s, meanwhile, is associated with the Baptist General Convention of Texas and has been open for a little more than a year with a focus on ministry that goes beyond Sunday morning.

The two pastors don’t conflict or compete: They say there are enough cowboys, or at least enough people who want to worship like a cowboy, in the Stockyards to go around.

“Talking to someone about religion is like talking about politics,” Miller said. “Talk to them about their horses and their spirituality, that’s what they connect with.”

Read it all.

Take the time to watch it all.

Ever since rivers have been dammed, destroying the migration routes of salmon, humans have worked to create ways to help the fish return to their spawning grounds. We’ve built ladders and elevators; we’ve carried them by hand and transported them in trucks. Even helicopters have been used to fly fish upstream.

But all of those methods are expensive and none of them are efficient.

Enter the salmon cannon.

The device uses a pressure differential to suck up a fish, send it through a tube at up to 22 mph and then shoot it out the other side, reaching heights of up to 30 feet. This weekend, it will be used to move hatchery fish up a tributary of the Columbia River in Washington.

Read it all and enjoy the video also.

The photo is courtesy of Selimah Harmon; you can out more about Camp Saint Christopher there.

I realize that people who talk at length about their pets are tedious at best, and often pitiful or repulsive. They post photos of their pets online, tell little stories about them, speak to them in disturbing falsettos, dress them in elaborate costumes and carry them around in handbags and BabyBjorns, have professional portraits taken of them and retouched to look like old master oil paintings. When people over the age of 10 invite you to a cat birthday party or a funeral for a dog, you need to execute a very deft etiquette maneuver, the equivalent of an Immelmann turn or triple axel, in order to decline without acknowledging that they are, in this area, insane.

This is especially true of childless people, like me, who tend to become emotionally overinvested in their animals and to dote on them in a way that gives onlookers the creeps. Often the pet seems to be a surrogate child, a desperate focus or joint project for a relationship that’s lost any other raison d’être, like becoming insufferable foodies or getting heavily into cosplay. When such couples finally have a child their cats or dogs are often bewildered to find themselves unceremoniously demoted to the status of pet; instead of licking the dinner plates clean and piling into bed with Mommy and Daddy, they’re given bowls of actual dog food and tied to a metal stake in a circle of dirt.

I looked up how much Americans spend on pets annually and have concluded that you do not want to know. I could tell you what I spent on my own cat’s special kidney health cat food and kidney and thyroid medication, and periodic blood tests that cost $300 and always came back normal, but I never calculated my own annual spending, lest I be forced to confront some uncomfortable facts about me. What our mass spending on products to pamper animals who seem happiest while rolling in feces or eating the guts out of rodents ”” who don’t, in fact, seem significantly less happy if they lose half their limbs ”” tells us about ourselves as a nation is probably also something we don’t want to know. But it occurs to me that it may be symptomatic of the same chronic deprivation as are the billion-dollar industries in romance novels and porn.

Read it all.

Ricochet is a surfing superstar who helps teach the disabled to hang ten, too.

Watch it all from NBC.

Bats are being treated as though they are more important than worshippers, a Conservative peer has said, as he urged a fightback against churches being turned into “historic bat barns”.

Lord Cormack, a committed Christian, told the House of Lords that bats are a causing a “menace” to historic places of worship.

The former MP for South Staffordshire and Vice President of the National Churches Trust said the mammals were “a particular menace to many old churches” pointing to cases where “remarkable 15th-century brasses” were being corroded by bat droppings.

Read it all.

Watch it all–simply amazing. From the basement of a drug dealer, go figure.

This is just wow–watch it all.

After three deployments to Iraq and three to Afghanistan, Staff Sgt. Dennis Swols is agitated, prone to bouts of anger and unable to really talk about his time on the battlefield.

But as Swols sits in a small office in the Robinson Health Clinic at Fort Bragg, his hand drops to the furry head beside him and his mood brightens. Settled at his feet, Lexy, a 5-year-old German shepherd, gives Swols a few moments of distraction.

It’s her job. And, according to Swols, she’s good at it.

Read it all.

Check it out (Hat tip:TF).

April was one of the most successful months in the South Carolina Aquarium’s 14-year history, thanks to a rare visit from a band of dancing mermaids.

The aquarium, which is a nonprofit organization, saw record attendance during the month it played host to the World Famous Mermaids of Florida’s Weeki Wachee Springs State Park, a team of female entertainers who wear elaborate fish-tailed costumes and perform synchronized underwater dances.

Read it all from the local paper and you have to love the picture.

For those interested you may read a lot more about Camp Saint Christopher there.

You know those lonely nights and weekends when you’re left to your own devices and forced to entertain yourself? Maybe you ponder the meaning of life, maybe you tackle a creative project or maybe you — wait, let’s face it: You probably turn on Netflix. Well your dog faces the same lonely existential crisis and his solution is, naturally, solo fetch.

Hey, it’s better than destroying your shoes.

We put together a compilation above of pooches tossing the old ball/stick around by themselves, and uh, to themselves.

This is just wonderful–Enjoy it all–KSH.

In a conflict that pits animal welfare against religious rights, Denmark has ordered that all food animals must be stunned before being killed. The move effectively bans the ritual slaughter methods prescribed in both Muslim and Jewish tradition.

Read or listen to it all.

The escalating slaughter of elephants and rhinos is drawing the anger of conservationist clerics, who have begun enlisting church members in the battle to save Africa’s wildlife.

The clerics are driven by a view that these animals are God’s gifts to nature and a critical part of Africa’s heritage.

In Kenya, their concerns heightened in mid-March after the conservation group Wildlife Direct said 16 rhinos had been gunned down in the first three months of the year. More than 30 elephants have also been slaughtered since January.

Read it all.

Nebraska is truly a flyover state for millions of snow geese, sandhill cranes and other migratory birds traveling north from south of the border during early spring. The area has become world famous for bird watchers who themselves migrate to the Audubon’s Rowe Sanctuary along Nebraska’s Platte River to see and hear the birds up close.

Watch the whole thrilling video (under three minutes) and please enjoy this one also.