So are we! Since this is the perfect time of the year to make a donation, we thought we'd help out those animal lovers among us by providing a list of local animal-related charities and nonprofits that can use a little (or alotta) support. PAWS (Pets are Wonderful Support) - Donate or volunteer for this fabulous organization which helps low-income persons with HIV/AIDS and other illnesses keep and take care of their companion animals. Rocket......

We're covering for SFist Jon today! --Left in SF asks progressives to play nice in the Migden-Leno race. Hilariously, Chris Daly refuses, twice. --Beyond Chron gives the lowdown on David Latterman and Rich DeLeon's SPUR talk about recent city voting trends. --PartyParty is unhappy about Gavin Newsom's plans to veto the 6 month trial of car-free Saturdays in Golden Gate Park (despite reports saying that it doesn't reduce the number of park visitors). --Getty v.......

Just in time for Halloween, Animal Care and Control has issued a renewed warning asking city residents to be careful about bats. San Francisco has seen five rabid bats over the last two years, and ten people have had to go through rabies treatment after being bitten -- so if you see a bat in your house, good God, don't try and take care of it yourself! Call ACC! In similarly well-timed Halloween press ops, the same SF Examiner column we found the bats in says that the California Nurses are holding a rally at Market and Montgomery. They'll be giving out Arnold masks that will say "property of _____," with one of the governor's corporate sponsors listed. Pick yours up between 11 and 1, and you'll be set for those 10/31 parties tonight! No one's a better Dracula than Bela Lugosi!...

What's going on with our four-legged friends? Well -- Oakland's passed a law making it illegal to own more than three animals in one house. You can petition to have more, but only if you can show that all the animals are registered and spayed/neutered. People who already have more than three pets are grandfathered in, but for those animals only (so you can't swap out Fluffy for Bane later or anything). This will supposedly make it easier to take legal action against the dreaded animal hoarders. We like the euphemism they use on Animal Precinct -- you're not a hoarder, you're just "overwhelmed." Across the bay, a San Francisco cop shot a pit bull charging at him as he investigated reports of squatters in the Portola District. No human injuries were suffered. In other animal-human encounters, two "terrified" campers fled their campsite on Mount Tam as two mountain lions, um, propragated their species. And the SF SPCA has just received a $13 million gift, which is the largest gift in the organization's history. They'll use the money to build a new animal hospital. The hospital will be called the Leanne Roberts Animal Care Center, in honor of a former board member of the SPCA who died in 2003 (and whose husband ponied up the cash). The hospital will be finished around 2007 -- just in time for the third season of Animal Cops SF! ...

Awww, look at that sweet duck. This duck is one of the survivors of last week's attack at the Campbell car wash, and was just found to have suffered a broken leg. The vets expect the duck to recover within 3-4 weeks. Meanwhile, the reward fund for information is now over $11,000. Editor and wag SFist Jackson forwards this along for the Animal Roundup, with the following note:

Beached whale! And no, I'm not talking Courtney Love.

We had a lump in our throat Saturday when we read that Ember, the Bayview pit bull who had been set on fire, was euthanized due to the severity of her injuries. And before we get any comments/hate mail on why pit bulls are good prospects for euthanasia regardless, let's all think about this again: someone set this animal on fire, and left it to die. This dog fought to live for three weeks......

Special "SFist Rita is out of town, so bear with us" edition. So sad. The San Leandro police department is on the hunt for one Irving "Gotti" Ramirez of Newark who is suspected of killing a SLPD officer. The officer was responding to a complaint about noisy loiterers when Ramirez and an accomplice allegedly drove up in a Thunderbird and shot him in the head. The officer, a three year veteran, leaves behind a wife......

Okay, we're a little late to the party on this one (what? We thought your party started at 9, not 7! Our bad!) -- but our new favorite TV channel's got to be the C-SPAN of San Francisco politics, SFGTV Channel 26. Yes, we know, you can download specific meetings to watch on your computer, or check out the DVDs of particular meetings from the library -- but what we're totally loving about Channel 26 is your total lack of control about what shows up! Where else could we totally just randomly turn on the TV and see..... Gavin Newsom joking with reporters...? ....Tom Ammiano telling the Board of Supes that "I've been out for years"....? ...or Chris Daly shouting out, "ONE COUNTRY, INDIVISIBLE" over everyone else's "under God" during the Pledge of Allegiance? It's like old-school MTV, only with Sean Elsbernd (and no "wubba wubba wubba"). Day or night, the videotapes of justice whir on -- whether Chris Daly's boredly twiddling his pen, or Gerardo Sandoval's running into a meeting right after he's marked "absent" on the roll call, or SFist Jackson pleading to get us a press pass -- it's awesome. Hey, any chance SFGTV could start airing Animal Care and Control dog hearings too? ...

Lotta animal news out there this week. First on everyone's mind is the situation in San Francisco concerning Nicholas Faibish, the boy mauled to death by his family's pit bulls, and buried on Wednesday. Yesterday, SF Animal Care and Control held the first of many meetings seeking public comment on how to handle pit bulls in the city. A large number of pit bull advocates were present at the meeting, and urged the city not to impose breed-specific legislation. One person said he didn't think that the dogs that mauled Faibish were even pit bulls at all. Everyone seems to agree, though, that a general requirement for spaying and neutering pit bulls in the city is a good first step. Sigh. In other animal news, the head of the SF Zoo penguin display is resigning because she got in a fight with the zoo vet about how they should have treated the penguins' recent chlamydia outbreak. We know, we know, it's not sexually transmitted in penguins -- but still, people! Ew! ...

Nick Faibish's mauling continues to send shock waves across the city -- Gavin Newsom's announced that he's starting a panel to look into possible restrictions on pit bull ownership in San Francisco. Gavin has indicated that he may ask for advice from a certain Ms. K. Guifoyle-Hemmer, who, you may recall, was previously on the SF DA's animal law team before her move out East. The panel is not expected to recommend an all-out ban on pit bull ownership in the city, but avenues for increasing Animal Care and Control's budget, like enforcing license requirements, will be explored. (What, they're not getting any money off Animal Planet?) As for the Faibish family, they're reportedly going to ask that ACC put down Rex, the male dog that attacked Nick. You probably remember that Ella, their female dog, was shot by the SFPD on the day of the incident. Authorities are speculating that the mauling may have been caused by a number of stressors, including the fact that Ella was in heat; the family was moving and everything was getting packed up; and the dogs' primary owner (Nick's father) was away in Oregon setting up their new house. And tying up some other reports, ACC reports that they had previously held Rex not for viciousness or attacking behavior, but because he was stolen and subsequently found in an arrest (thanks to his microchip). Finally, the family of the boy in Richmond who was attacked by three pit bulls in 2001 has expressed their concern and sympathy for the Faibishes, and notes that they have started a foundation to help survivors of dog maul attacks. And C.W. Nevius recalls the 80-year-old woman who survived her attack by a pit bull (in the service of decrying pro pit-bull activists). ...

Oh no -- not again. Nicholas Faibish, a 12 year old boy who lived in the Inner Sunset was mauled to death today by his family's two pit bulls. The police killed one dog on the scene when she wouldn't let them in to rescue the boy, and took the other, Rex (pictured at left), to the SF Animal Care and Control for observation. Neighbors report that the dogs were often very sweet, though others said sometimes they would bark and lunge menacingly. One of the dogs had been taken into animal control before, but ACC didn't believe it to be aggressive. The family was planning to move to Oregon this summer, and the principal at Roosevelt Middle, where Nicolas attended 6th grade, began to cry in the middle of tonight's eighth grade formal dance when she heard the news. Our sympathies go out to the Faibish family. Picture from the Chron by Deanna Fitzmaurice ...

This first story is so good (thanks, SFist Jon!), we've had to wait until two other animal stories popped up in the local news just so we could do an Animal Roundup about it! A heroic African parrot named Mango is recovering after breaking up a raucous fight in the South Bay. The guilty party, named Grady Powless, rooms with a guy named Joey, who's lost both his legs. Powless got in some kind of fight with Joey, over a shirt, and ended up hurting his teeth. The next day, Powless, still sulky, came in, kicked legless Joey in the crotch, and threw a flower pot and a barbecue grill lid at him. As Mango's owner tried to intervene in the fight, Mango flew in to help and began dive-bombing Powless. Powless freaked out, started pulled out some of Mango's tail feathers to protect himself, and the cops came and took Powless away. Powless, who has mental problems, is being looked after, and Mango's tail feathers should grow back. Surprisingly, no word on legless Joey! Obligatory two other stories about animals: A poodle being illegally walked off-leash at Fort Mason got stranded on the cliff, and the Animal Care and Control officer sent out to help got stuck on the cliff too. The coast guard saved the poodle and the fire department saved the ACC officer. The Oh, we so hope this gets on Animal Cops SF! And a Marin woman's 50-year-old tortoise has run away (the article's pretty funny). ...

San Francisco's favorite but least read Q&A columnist, the Essefficist, answers a question about pet burial....

We're big animal lovers here in the Bay Area, as evidenced by the dedicated employees at many of ourarea humane societies and city shelters. In addition to these established animal care organizations are the many animal rescue organizations who save and seek homes for many of the animals that could no longer be accomodated by these societies and shelters. Here in our SFist bully pulpit, we realized that we have the chance to highlight......

With all the positive hubbub about San Francisco's Animal Care and Control officers and its Dog Court (oh, you bet your sweet bippy we're discussing this in We Read the Weeklies tomorrow), it's doubly sad to hear about the allegations of animal cruelty that have been directed across the bay at Oakland's animal shelter. ReShawn McClarty, the acting director of the shelter, has been just placed on administrative leave as allegations concerning the shelter's mistreatments continue to grow. Lori Barnabe, a former Oakland animal control officer who quit in June, recently sent a letter to the city and the Oakland police force, claiming that the shelter routinely euthanizes animals that are scheduled to be picked up by rescue groups or distraught owners, and that animals are routinely euthanized without being given the standard course of sedatives first. Barnabe also claimed to have seen a live dog that had accidentally been closed in a barrel of animal corpses in a freezer, shelter workers altering records after euthanization to make animals appear more vicious, staff leaving kittens in an unattended drop box overnight (causing a kitten to die), and in general, levels of neglect bordering on abuse (like locking a dog in a kennel without exercise for a year). The shelter concedes that a dog was accidentally euthanized last month, but claims that in general the shelter is run quite well overall. The Oakland City Council is holding a town meeting tomorrow night at 7 p.m. in City Hall to discuss these allegations and the appointment of a new shelter director with the public....

It's high time for a roundup of Bay Area animal news! (Does anyone know when Animal Cops San Francisco is going to start? We're dying here!)...

Bay Area crime roundup (special doggie edition)...

Ay yi yi! The SF Animal Care and Control is asking for your help -- yes, yours! -- in identifying the man outside the recently-renamed Monster Park who threw two helpless chihuahuas out the window of his speeding car yesterday night. ...