First raccoon to be named Cadbury Bunny

The Candy Company announced Louie the Raccoon, a two-year-old pet from Miami, Fla., as the winner of the sixth annual Cadbury Bunny Tryouts and will have a role in the 2025 Cadbury Bunny Tryouts commercial, an Easter tradition for the brand.

Louie’s owner, Jaime, rescued him in 2021 when he was deemed unfit to live in the wild, Cadbury said.

The raccoon won the hearts of voters on Instagram with his friendly face and his special skill: creating paintings to be sold to benefit wildlife rescue and rehabilitation centres.

Man suffers rare “Demonic face syndrome”

Victor Sharrah, a Tennessee man, has been diagnosed with prosopometamorphopsia (PMO), a rare neurological disorder that distorts people’s faces, making them appear stretched and demonic. Since November 2020, he has been experiencing this unsettling phenomenon, seeing distorted faces everywhere he looks.

PMO is extremely rare, with only 75 recorded cases, and its cause remains unknown. Researchers at Dartmouth College worked with Sharrah to visualise the facial distortions he perceives, shedding light on this mysterious condition.

Despite living with PMO for almost four years, Sharrah hopes for relief but has learned to cope with his unique visual perception.

Alligator put on weight-loss diet

An alligator found living behind a former Coca-Cola plant in Florida has been put on a diet to lose some of its over 400 pounds.

The nine-foot gator was relocated from the grounds of the former plant in Temple Terrace after neighbours raised concerns about a damaged fence around the retention pond. The alligator was taken to Croc Encounters, where veterinarians decided to put the over-400-pound reptile on a weight-loss diet.

“That’s a little heavy for that animal,” Croc Encounters Director John Panner said.

Neighbours living near the plant said some locals had been feeding the gator, which they nicknamed Coca-Cola. The goliath gator was reportedly served lunch meat and other stuff by nearby residents. The alligator’s new diet will be more well-suited to his species.

Instagram-famous cat looks like a cartoon character

Four-year-old Fedya, a grey rescued cat from Russia, became a social media sensation thanks to his funny permanently startled look.

When Fedya’s owner, Natalya Zhdanova, found him in her backyard in 2020, she had no idea he would one day become an Instagram star with over 300,000 followers. Natalya’s friends were amused by Fedya’s constantly startled appearance, and she started posting photos of him on Instagram in 2021, journey. His fans have since ballooned to 360,000.

Fedya’s owner suspects that his unusual facial expression is due to some genetic defect or a result of physical trauma.

Published in Dawn, Young World, April 20th, 2024