GPOY
Day: September 1, 2011
BAMF of the Day: 22-year-old Brooke Collins of Juneau spotted a black bear biting her dachshund’s neck, so she did what any normal dog lover would do: She ran over and punched the bear square in the nose.
“It was a stupid thing but I couldn’t help it,” she told the Juneau Empire. “I know you’re not supposed to do that but I didn’t want my dog to be killed.”
Collins says that when she let her dogs out Sunday evening she didn’t see that a bear was nearby. It was only after she heard Fudge barking that she realized something was amiss. “That bear was carrying her like a salmon,” she says.
The next few minutes went by in a blur. she approached the bear and struck it in the face, causing it to let go of the pup. “It was all so fast,” Collins is quoted as saying. “All I could think about was my dog was going to die.”
She sustained very minor injuries, and Fudge made away with a few shallow claw and bite marks.
[empire.]
Hazard Scale of the Day: After a particularly nasty natural disaster, there is one reliable metric that FEMA turns to in order to determine the severity of the damage: The “Waffle House Index.”
Green indicates that Waffle Houses in the affected area are serving a full menu, meaning that the damage is limited. Yellow signals more extensive damage, resulting in a limited menu (the generators are on and food supplies are low).
Finally, red means severe damage has forced the restaurant to close its doors — something the Waffle House prides itself on doing very rarely. In fact, all but one of the 22 Waffle Houses that lost power during Hurricane Irene were up and running by Wednesday evening.
“If you get there and the Waffle House is closed?,” says FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate, “that’s really bad. That’s where you go to work.”
