PLANTATION, Fla. (AP) – The veterinarian thought the X-ray was a joke.

Jon-Paul Carew has seen strange items get into the stomachs of dogs before, things like kebab skewers and small utensils. But a 13-inch serrated knife in a 6-month-old puppy?

That was a new one.

“I was just flabbergasted,” said Carew, of Imperial Point Animal Hospital in Fort Lauderdale.

The knife was removed this week from Elsie, a Saint Bernard puppy. The dog’s owner, Jane Scarola, wrapped it in a towel and put it in a cabinet atop the refrigerator.

“I’m going to frame it and give it to Dr. Carew,” Scarola said. “He should hang it. Everybody should know what puppies are capable of putting down their throats.”

She thinks one of her six other dogs – four Saint Bernards, a German shepherd and a Labrador – somehow got the knife off a counter and it eventually made its way to Elsie.

“She wants to eat everything and anything,” Scarola said.

Mistaken code causes panic

GEORGETOWN, S.C. (AP) – In the world of aviation, what’s the difference between the codes 7600 and 7500? It turns out plenty of panic.

Deputies and a SWAT team surrounded a plane at the Georgetown County Airport after one of the pilots accidentally entered a code saying the aircraft has been hijacked.

State Ports Authority Chairman Harry Butler was flying the plane from Georgetown to Columbia on Thursday morning when he lost both radios.

The weather wasn’t good enough to land in Columbia without the radio, so he turned back to the coast, where it was clear.

En route, his co-pilot sent a message on a signal device. He was supposed to type 7600, which means “lost communications.” But instead, he punched in 7500, which reports a hijacking, Butler said.

Air traffic controllers in Myrtle Beach then notified federal authorities, who sent in the local deputies.

Butler said he had no idea what happened until he landed and a dozen deputies surrounded his plane. FBI agents and officials from the Federal Aviation Administration questioned the pair for about two hours, Butler said.

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NEW YORK (AP) – For two trapeze instructors, it was one of their most memorable catches.

Paul Cannon and Jonah Spear of the Trapeze School New York were being hailed as heroes Friday after making a daring leap into the Hudson River to rescue a man who appeared to be drowning.

The incident began Thursday when police officers ran into the school and asked to borrow some rope to rescue a man who had jumped into the nearby river.

“I’ve got somebody in the air and Paul’s getting ready to catch,” when the police officers burst in looking for help, said Spear, a 23-year-old aspiring actor who has worked as a lifeguard at summer camps.

The instructors grabbed some rope and flotation devices and ran to the river’s edge, where they saw a shadowy figure floating in the murky green water.

Cannon jumped first, followed by Spear, who tossed one end of a rope to police officers and carried the other end into the river toward the victim.

Within moments, the men had the victim in their grasp and brought him ashore.

“At the time, something had to be done, so I did it,” Cannon said. “I wasn’t going to watch the guy die, so I decided to do something about it.”

A tourist taking a lesson at the trapeze school, which has been featured in an episode of HBO’s “Sex and the City,” administered CPR before firefighters took over.

The 23-year-old victim was in stable condition Friday, a Bellevue Hospital spokeswoman said.

AP-ES-09-24-05 0325EDT

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