Bad animal news briefs

Animal muggers don't only pick on someone their own size:

A fully-grown man has told how he was mugged by a fox, which cornered him and forced him into handing over his dinner. .. The wily fox, which had been sitting on a kerb at the side of the road, followed him into an alleyway... The aggressive animal leapt at him, circling him like prey and trying to snatch his shopping bag.

Despite making attempts to escape, the fox persisted and carried out a sustained attack on the food he had just bought from Tesco.

Eventually, Mr Baker claims, he resorted to offering the animal his loaf of garlic bread and the fox scampered off.

-Animals aren't concerned about their carbon footprint: in England, a town blames seagulls for keeping their streetlights on 24 hours a day:

Council chiefs in Brighton, East Sussex, say that the light-sensitive photocell mechanism on top of the lamps is being blocked by the birds’ droppings, fooling the system into thinking that it is permanently night time.

-I don't know exactly what's going on here but it's definitely bad behavior:

After two unexpected pregnancies at a sanctuary for retired research chimpanzees, other female chimps have been put on birth control and the males are getting a new round of vasectomies.

The pregnancy at Chimp Haven, opened in 2005 near Shreveport, was discovered on Valentine's Day when a worker noticed Flora, a 29-year-old chimp, carrying a newborn.

An ultrasound Friday confirmed 49-year-old Ginger also was pregnant and due in late July or early August, Brent said.

Every male gets a vasectomy before being sent to Chimp Haven because there's a surplus of captive chimpanzees.

Artist Sandy Skoglund imagines the next nightmarish step in the fox takeover of our prepared food establishments, photographed by Flickr user wallyg.

Bad Animal Video Roundup

New cases of old animal vices, and some new insights into their depravity, caught on film:

-We've seen so many examples of animals invading places of business that it might be time to retire this one to a Hall of Fame, but what the heck, here's a deer crashing its way into a New Jersey Goodwill store.

-Way back at the beginning of this blog we met a seagull that repeatedly strolled into a store in England to steal its favorite flavor of chips. Check out another example of the thieving persistence of these birds as this gull steals lunch from someone's backpack, completely unconcerned at being filmed the whole time.

-Ever wonder what your cat does all night? Ever wonder why you feel so tired in the morning? Maybe there's a connection. Check out this time-lapse video.

-This one shocked even me: Baboons that kidnap puppies.

-And finally: Yes, it's important to beware of the dangers of animals. But first, make sure the animal is alive. Example: Here's video from Houston of police responding to 911 calls about... a stuffed tiger.

There's even less excuse when you realize that it looks exactly like the tiger in the photo above. That one caused the same kind of ruckus in England back in June. People, you need to keep up with this blog!

Bad birds flying under the radar

To my chagrin, I recently discovered that a considerable amount of bad bird behavior has been sneaking past me.

To be fair, this blog has been on the case even when birds are trying to avoid scrutiny by being in the news in a language other than English. We also did not miss the annual Thanksgiving update on the dangers of turkeys.

But then I spent part of the slow internet season over the holidays catching up on the always interesting Nothing to Do With Arbroath, where I found the story reported last time of the hawk flying into a woman's home to attack her Chihuahua.

And upon further perusal, I found that this blog is a trove of bird stories from the past couple of months. We've got some run-of-the-mill destructiveness:

-In England, a car dealership has had to supply umbrellas to customers even in fair weather to protect them from seagulls. Otherwise they're bombarded by both bird poo and trash from a nearby dump. "If you don't run to the showroom from your car, you will look like a dalmatian. We have had chicken carcasses and tea bags dropped on our forecourt. Chicken carcasses, dropped from a great height, will dent the cars."

-In Oklahoma, starlings tried to ruin Christmas by eating the lightbulbs in a courthouse Christmas star, costing the town $1,200 for replacements.

But, in some more interesting cases, we've got birds using a variety of strategies to get humans in hot water:

-In Wales a woman who caused a firey car crash claimed she had been distracted by a magpie flying alongside her car. To be fair, the fact that her alcohol level was over three times the legal limit may have contributed to the situation.

-But working with human vices isn't their only approach - playing on people's sympathies works too: in Lynn, Massachusetts, an 80-year-old woman is facing criminal charges for illegally feeding ducks and geese.

-And in New York, a pigeon nicknamed Fred has been dive-bombing police assigned to patrol the construction site at the former World Trade Center. Not only is Fred pooping on them, the officers have been reprimanded for defending themselves. Allegedly due to public complaints, a source told the New York Post, “We were told that if we didn’t go easy on the bird, we would get in trouble.”




Yet another warning from Flickr user Andrew Eason.

Bad birds

-In Britain, a bird gets in a 2-for-1 deal, being bad both to a fellow bird and to a totally innocent human: A seagull caught an escaped pet parakeet, and then dropped it on the head of a unsuspecting pedestrian:

‘It was just the last thing you’d expect when you’re walking along eating a pack of chips. I felt something scrape my head then saw it bounce off and hit a shop window. I couldn’t believe it when I saw it was a budgie."

-And in Columbia, a parrot has been taken into custody by police as part of a conspiracy to sell drugs:

According to environmental authorities, Lorenzo the parrot was trying to tip-off a local drug cartel when officers conducted an undercover raid.

"This parrot was sending out alerts," said Environmental Police Officer Hollman Oliveira. "You could say he was some sort of watch bird."

Lorenzo caused quite the stir as he was presented to journalists. The well-trained creature even showed off his look out skills as he yelled out: "Run, run you are going to get caught."

Perhaps the most shocking part of this news is that Lorenzo is merely the tip of a pstittacine criminal iceberg: authorities claimed to have seized over 1700 similarly trained parrots, and he was not alone in this case either: Four men and two other birds were also arrested in the raid.


See the whole story with video here.

Photo of another unhappy victim of Budgie-on-Head Syndrome by Flickr user Lodigs.

Bad Birds, British Isles division

Foolish locals encourage junk-food eating, delinquent seagull

BBC NEWS - A seagull has turned shoplifter by wandering into a shop and helping itself to crisps.

The bird walks into the RS McColl newsagents in Aberdeen when the door is open and makes off with cheese Doritos.

The seagull, nicknamed Sam, has now become so popular that locals have started paying for his crisps.

Shop assistant Sriaram Nagarajan said: "Everyone is amazed by the seagull. For some reason he only takes that one particular kind of crisps."

The bird first swooped in Aberdeen's Castlegate earlier this month and made off with the 55p crisps, and is now a regular.

Once outside, the crisps are ripped open and the seagull is joined by other birds.

Mr Nagarajan said: "He's got it down to a fine art. He waits until there are no customers around and I'm standing behind the till, then he raids the place... He's becoming a bit of a celebrity. Seagulls are usually not that popular but Sam is a star because he's so funny."

If you don't believe it, watch the video.

(Photo from BBC.)