The South Bayview Bulldog

A 6-year-old boy walking to school with his mother in New Jersey has been attacked by a raccoon which mauled the child and left deep wounds in his face, according to police and eyewitnesses. Police have the raccoon’s carcass and have ordered rabies tests due back Friday. Raccoon behaviour across Canada is of concern since the discovery of rabid raccoons in Hamilton. The Ontario government is on an aggressive program of feeding bait to raccoons to immunize them. According to witnesses, including the boy’s mother, the raccoon made a direct run at the  boy as he and his mother walked to school. A witness told police the animal ran across the street, jumped on the boy’s back and crawled onto his face Wednesday morning. Police Chief Michael Foligno told local media a man ran over and grabbed the raccoon before beating the animal to death with a stick.

GOOD SAMARITAN

Shannon Lampert made a 911 call after seeing the disturbing attack. “The boy was bleeding,” she said. “It looked like it bit under his eye and bit the side of his face. I just called police.”  Danny Walls, a good Samaritan who was driving by, jumped into action. “I’m coming around the corner from the gas station, I see this lady acting really hysterical,” he said. “She’s jumping around, she’s like ‘somebody help me, somebody help me.’ I thought she was crazy because I didn’t see anything, snow was piled all the way up. When I kinda drove up, maybe about five or six feet away from her, I seen this huge raccoon on top of the kid, and I could see his red jacket.” Walls exited the car with a fiberglass painter’s pole and began to strike the raccoon until it released its grip on the child.

A 69-year-old man has died at St. Michael’s Hospital after a huge truck wheel smashed into the windshield of his SUV on Highway 400. OPP say the accident happened about 9:30 Wednesday morning when the southbound truck lost a set of wheels. They hurtled across the highway into the northbound lanes and struck the SUV.

Good morning

Many residents of Moore Park, Bennington Heights and those in parts of South Leaside heard the sound of Springtime as they woke this sunny Wednesday. No doubt others across the area heard such music as well. These may be birds which don’t go far from here even in harsher weather than the zero degree day forecast for January 27, 2016. It certainly seemed to suit the feathered early risers. Nice and a lot more in touch with what’s happening than the groundhog superstitions yet to come in February.

Authors Ian Hamilton  and R. J. Harlock will be at Sleuth of Baker at 907 Millwood Rd. at Sutherland Drive tomorrow (Thursday January 28, from 6 to 7:30 pm). They will be introducing their newest novels, The Princeling of Nanjing (#8 in Ian’s Ava Lee series) ($19.95) and A Cold White Fear (#7 in Robin’s Meg Harris series) ($17.95). There will be short readings, questions and signings.

CBC

When you ride GO Transit you have to hope that your fellow passengers are not as berserk at the man who tried to grab a woman’s purse last night. When she held onto it the man hit the emergency alarm stopping the train. He then pried open the train door (what with?) and leaped onto the tracks to make an escape. He was last seen legging out it along the rails between Birchmount and Ranleigh in Scarborough

 Let’s see, taxis, schools, air traffic controllers, civil servants, hospital staff (that’s a good one) and others all on strike in France because of the state of things. NDTV

This is a charming story that will thrill adults who grew up with Peter Rabbit. Now a new tale to enchant generations to come. Eli Glasner of the CBC.

The Leaside Wildcats will face off against the Toronto Aeros in a rare midweek game at York University Arena Wednesday night. It could be a good game with the eighth place Aeros looking to prove something against a Leaside team newly-installed in fourth place in the Provincial Women’s Hockey League. The puck drops at 6.30 at York.

New Whole Foods expected to be open by April

The new Whole Foods at Bayview and Broadway Aves is expected to open no later than April and it’s sailing into a barrage of lousy economics and cranky consumerism. For one thing, Whole Foods stock is valued at half of what it was less than two years ago. What happened? According to CNN Money, things like the New York overpricing furore and lower same store sales are hurting the specialty food retailer. Into the bargain comes a Wall Street analyst downgrade based on a 1,000 shopper survey which concluded that prices were too high (The Whole Pay Cheque thing has stuck). There is a sore point even with people who have money. Are they paying too much for produce because is has been labelled organic. The New York consumers said they felt Whole Foods was inflating prices based on not much. There is no doubt that Whole Foods is a pleasant experience in the store but in South Bayview that’s pretty much the norm. Time will tell.