Forest rangers in the northern Italian Alps have for the first time taken pictures of an albino mountain goat at about 10,000 feet above the Les Laures valley in the northwestern Val d'Aosta region. Named "Snowflake", the albino capra ibex was seen climbing with its mother Sunday, reports Christian Chioso a regional wildlife official. The occurrence of Albinism is rare in any species and has not been previously documented among this type of goat. AP quotes Chioso as saying, "This is the only one ever documented, the only one ever seen. " Capra ibex is a type of wild mountain goat with large curved horns that lives in mountainous areas.

After spending their lives enduring brutal treatment, the last of Bulgaria's dancing bears are headed to a mountain sanctuary where they can rest their paws. The bears are the last in a line of centuries of bears in the Balkans that have been trained to dance by walking across burning embers on their bare paws hopping from one foot onto the other to escape the fire while their trainer beat a drum until they connected the drum to the pain. The bears were caught while they were cubs and trained. Many Gypsy, or Roma, families earned their livelihoods with bear dancing for generations.

Spring is the best season for climbing and 23 more adventurers have just scaled the top of the world's highest peak, Mount Everest in Nepal. The latest party to reach the summit consisted of 11 are Nepali Sherpas, five Americans, three Britons, two Canadians and one Turk. According to Nepal's Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation, over 200 climbers have reached the summit this season. May is a particularly good time for mountain climbing in Nepal. A total of 23 expeditions are scheduled this season alone.

Officers called for catching a mountain lion spotted wandering in the Franklin Business Park in Wisconsin on Tuesday afternoon, could not find the cat but did see a coyote in the area. According to Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports, police called the regional office of the state Department of Natural Resources at about 2:30 p. m. on Tuesday after employees of Electronic Cable Specialists reported seeing an animal that resembled a mountain lion in some nearby woods.

Park rangers at the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park are discouraging people from leaving religious offerings at the top of Mount Kilauea. They say food is often left and that it attracts rats and cockroaches. An estimated 45 pounds of offerings are left every week.