Bears will stop at nothing

This blog has been following the misdeeds of bears since at least 2009 when a bear mugged a New Jersey man in his driveway for his Italian sandwich. We've seen bears breaking into cars, a bear in a hot tub, and one stealing from a back porch freezer, to name a few.

But recently the trend has been ominous: Bears have been boldly strolling right into our homes and businesses. Earlier this month, we saw bears that broke into a pizza place and robbed a home of a birthday cake. And then, if you are a fan of the blog's Facebook page, you saw video of a bear climbing around in the vegetable department in a grocery store. (And if you're not a fan of the blog on Facebook, why not?)

Now, the bear invasion may be threatening one of our most precious national traditions. Hide your Halloween supplies or you may be next: a bear broke into a candy shop in Tennessee. When two employees arrived for work in the morning, they found a scene of devastation:

Candy, wrappers and packaging were strewn throughout the back storeroom. Rock candy was broken in tiny pieces all over the floor and nuts were scattered everywhere. Pecan logs — $15.95 a pound — had been chewed on and hunks were missing out of $3 caramel apples. A whole container of white-chocolate-covered pretzels was demolished, including the plastic packaging they were housed in.

The storeroom's cement floor was still wet and covered in paw prints, from the bear's walk through the morning showers.

Upon further inspection, after rounding one of the candy-making counters, the women noticed a hole in glass of the front door. The bear had also relieved itself in front of the shop's glass display cases.

The pair assumed the bear was gone, but ran out to the safety of their cars to phone their supervisor anyway. Good thinking, because when he arrived, he came face to face with the bear in a storeroom. Fortunately no one was injured, but $500 worth of sweets were lost, and the front door of the shop will need to be replaced.

Don't think you're safe because you're not in the Tennesee mountains. Bears are heading for places where people aren't used to them, like the suburbs of Atlanta - so far those bears have been satisfied with trash and bird feeders, but how long do you think that will last?

And you can't even expect the authorities to be on your side. They'll advise you not to leave food where bears can get at it, and then, like in Albuquerque, they go and take in a skinny bear, feed it up, and release it.

That bear knew what side his bread was buttered on. When Fish and Game officials brought him up into the mountains and opened the door to freedom, one said, "He wasn’t eager to go... he didn’t want to come out of the trap for some reason."

"For some reason." Yeah, now he'll have to break into houses on his own, instead of being served. But they've made sure he'll do a good job of it: "He is now a nearly 200 pound bear," said a staff member at the wildlife rehab center where the bear had been a guest. "And a very feisty bear, aggressive bear. He should do well."

Bad Farm Animal Linkarama

For today, links to some excellent pieces from elsewhere about bad farm animals:

How to Survive A Cow Attack
  Includes the excellent advice:

If you have a cow or bull that you know to be prone to violent outbursts, Sanderson says, get rid of it. Have a nice steak dinner. Invite your friends.

 Drunk Pigs 

“Some were looking at me like, ‘Woohoo!’” Shore says, her voice trailing away into laughter. “They were really, really, really drunk.” A few pigs were trying to walk but their back legs kept giving out, and the rest were spinning in circles, kicking up their back heels, and as Shore says, “snortin’ and dancing around; having a good ol’ time.”

NY State vs Feral Swine

Andersen figures the hogs have caused upwards of $40,000 in damage on his farm.

The worst loss was a corn crop that the pigs took out twice in a row, Andersen said.

"In a week they had cleaned the field. Eleven acres," he said. "I replanted it. Man, it was gorgeous. About four or five inches high. I was in there on a Thursday night. I came back on a Monday morning and it was gone. There wasn't a piece left anywhere, they just cleaned it. Went right down the rows, vrooooom."
 

Photo of brave law enforcement officer encountering a pig on the loose from the Santa Monica Police department's Facebook page.

Cat Burglars Forever

Sometimes I think we don't need to hear about another cat - especially another English cat - who steals odd things from the neighbors. But this one is unique: it's a team.

Eric and Ernie are two cat brothers in Essex, England, who have been a criminal duo since being adopted as kittens about four years ago. They've brought home about a hundred items and specialize in apparel. They particularly like shoes, says their owner:

"They will bring one home one day, and the next day the matching shoe will arrive," she said.

"Somewhere there is a man watching television with cold feet because we have both of his slippers, which say, 'Keep quiet, I'm watching football', on the front."

They were also thwarted in one big attempt:

“Our neighbour has two sons and her husband saw a Cub Scout uniform being dragged over the fence, but managed to retrieve it."

Their owner has tried to get them to turn their skills to something more valuable, but to no avail:

Mrs Boddy said she had shown both cats £5 and £10 notes in the hope they might bring home "something other than a mangled item of clothing."

If you still haven't had enough cat burglars, check out this roundup from the BBC that includes one with his own Facebook and Twitter.

Conspiracy protects famous monkey on the lam

Longtime followers of this blog may recall the Tampa Bay Mystery Monkey, a macaque that's been roaming Florida since 2009. We last checked in with this primate when he was sighted taking a dip in a woman's swimming pool and stealing grapefruit from her tree. His frustrated pursuers reported that they'd hit him with bigger and bigger doses of tranq darts to no effect.

The local newspaper has maintained a web page dedicated to coverage of sightings and attempts to capture the monkey, and of course he has his own Facebook page.

But despite this widespread awareness and repeated capture attempts, he's still on the loose - and attentive readers of this blog will not be surprised at the revelation that he's had human help evading the authorities.

The Tampa Bay Times reports that for the last six months the monkey has been living in the yard of a retired couple, where he's allegedly particularly attached to their elderly mother and aged cat:

He waits on the firewood pile for his morning banana and walks ahead of the elderly woman, as if to protect her, as she walks up a long driveway to get the newspaper.

The monkey is gentle with the sickly, old cat, sometimes picking her up and moving her to a sunnier spot on the patio. He loves Oreo cookies, twisting the tops off and licking the frosting. The family has it on video.

A wildlife official was appalled to hear about the sitation. "This is dangerous and someone's going to get seriously hurt, and it's going to cause us to have to kill this animal on site," he said. "What they're doing is they're teaching him not to be cautious around people. In the end, it always ends badly."

And the monkey does seem to have a secret life to some extent, sometimes disappearing for a day or two and returning with a banana or a cookie from somewhere else.

But while the couple say they know he's a wild animal and would never touch him or let him in the house - "He's got fangs," the husband said - they've worked to gain his trust and are so protective of the monkey that they only spoke to reporters on the condition that their names and location be kept secret.

And other professional monkeyhuggers are on their side:

Dr. Agustin Fuentes, an anthropology and primate expert at the University of Notre Dame who has followed the monkey's story for two years, was thrilled to hear of his new home. He saw the latest photos, noting his coat, skin and face indicated a fairly low-stress, healthy life. This, he said, is the happy ending everyone should want for the monkey.

"He needs a family, he needs a social group, and he found it," Fuentes said. "He's never going to leave. The nice woods make him feel comfortable. There are two options: Let him find whatever joy he can get out of life or kill him. I don't see any reason to kill him."

What happens when animals party too hard in the Internet age

Maybe you worry about who will see those party photos on your friends' Facebook pages. Well, ours isn't the only species who may wake up to find our drunken embarrassment plastered all over the Internet:

When Per Johansson of Särö, south of Gothenburg, returned home from work on Tuesday it was dark outside and the rain was coming down hard. Suddenly Johansson heard a bellowing noise from the garden next door.

“I thought at first that someone was having a laugh. Then I went over to take a look and spotted an elk stuck in an apple tree with only one leg left on the ground,” Johansson told The Local.

Johansson took pity on the animal and called for help. He and his neighbors tried to saw the branches to make it more comfortable, but it finally required the efforts of the fire brigade to get it out of the tree. Then, rather than running away like a respectable wild creature would, it lay on the ground:

According to Johansson, it looked very much like the elk was severely drunk after eating too many fermenting apples.

Drunken elk are common in Sweden during the autumn season when there are plenty of apples lying around on the ground and hanging from branches in Swedish gardens.

While the greedy animal was reaching ever higher to reach the delicious but intoxicating fruit, it most likely stumbled into the tree, getting itself hopelessly entangled in the branches.

And from what Johansson could gather, this particular animal had been on a day-long bender.

“My neighbour recognised it as the animal that almost ran into her car earlier in the day. She was pretty sure the elk was already under the influence,“ said Johansson.

The hungover elk finally dragged itself away the next morning and is no doubt trying to hide out as photos and reports of its predicament have gone all over the world.

Of course, readers of this blog know that there is nothing unique about this case. We've seen drunk birds, fruit flies, a deer, baboons, a badger, bees, and elephants. (In fact, there is a whole chapter about drunken and other substance-abusing animals in the book. Have you ordered your copy yet?)

But let's also not forget that the last time we reported on a drunk elk in Sweden, it was no laughing matter. In 2009, a man was jailed for ten days for the murder of his wife and only released when cleared by forensic evidence: hair and saliva found on the dead woman's clothes belonged to an elk. The motive was unclear, but police cited the aggressive tendencies of elk drunk on fermented apples.

Mr. Johansson may have meant to do a good deed, but I hope he is watching his back.

Monkey on the lam

A famous roving primate in Florida was spotted again: he broke into a woman's enclosed swimming pool, took a dip, and stole some grapefruit from her backyard trees on his way out.

For over a year the rhesus macaque has evaded capture, even though pursuers have managed to hit it with tranquilizer darts, which are worse than useless, according to one source involved in the pursuit:

"The drugs just don't seem to affect him for whatever reason," said Yates. "We've increased the dosage every time that we've shot him. What we're really doing is turning him into a drug addict."

(As if being a thief and an addict isn't enough, the monkey's other offense is being another of those animals who have more Facebook friends than I do.)

We wish the Florida authorities luck in their continuing efforts, and agree with Stephen Colbert, who's been persistent in keeping this story before the public: "I believe animals should be in their natural habitat: behind bars."



Monkey in the pool room by break-in victim Renee Barth from the St. Petersburg Times.

If animals want rights, they can pay their own bills too

This blog is constantly demonstrating that animals treat people badly. But it in no way advocates that we treat them likewise in return. If nothing else, we wouldn't want to lower ourselves to their level.

We're not even going to nitpick when laws protecting animals come close to mollycoddling, such as the Swiss laws that forbid flushing goldfish down the toilet and require that guinea pigs and canaries be kept with roommates.

But we're relieved to report that yesterday, the Swiss voted against a proposed law that would have required the government to provide free lawyers to represent animals in court.

The lawyer widely quoted in articles leading up to the vote is famed for representing a dead fish in a case arguing that it was cruel for a fisherman to spend ten minutes attempting to land it. This blog was almost on the fish's side till we read that it had committed the unforgivable sin of having more Facebook friends than we do (reportedly over 6,000.)

We're not saying that animals don't deserve legal representation. We're just saying that if animals are going to start taking jobs that people could otherwise have (as we've seen most recently here and here), then, let them pay for their lawyers with their own damn money like the rest of us have to.


Law dog by flickr user Jurisdog.

Prominent position for pervert parrot

As we have seen again and again, it's no wonder animals keep acting the way they do when people so often actually reward them for their bad behavior. In perhaps the most fantastic example so far, a parrot in New Zealand has been given a prominent government job in response to his worldwide fame - as a pervert.

A kakopo named Sirocco, member of a highly endangered New Zealand species, became an internet sensation due to a video clip in which he pleasured himself upon the head of naturalist Mark Carwardine, who was filming a TV series based on his book with the late Douglas Adams. (In case you haven't already seen this clip, you can click here. Or, more tastefully, not.)

Now, this perverted kakapo has been appointed official government "spokesbird" for conservation. The prime minister says of the bird:

“He’s very media-savvy, he’s got a worldwide fan base – they hang on every squawk that comes out of his beak. He’ll be a great official spokesbird for New Zealand,” he said.“Sirocco can speak very loudly on this topic and by the end of this campaign people will be a lot more aware of what’s going on.”

I probably don't need to tell you that the bird now has his own website, Facebook page, Twitter feed, etc.

I am appalled by the precedent that has been set here. Now that birds know that this is how to get ahead... well, for one thing, I think I'm going to start wearing a hat.

Animals behaving humanly, part 2

Perhaps the most presumptuous behavior possible is an animal thinking it can actually replace us in our jobs.

It's bad enough if it's a fairly low paid profession, like the monkeys that wait tables in Japan, or the dog we met in an earler post who worked in a gas station.

Some animals have tried to usurp the place of much more skilled professionals, though. Fortunately, we'll see today and next time, some of them have gotten their comeuppance.

You've probably seen the stories about elephants and other animals painting pictures which are sold for fundraisers for zoos. The latest artistic star in the news is an orangutan at the Vienna Zoo, who's been taking photos, and in an even more up-to-date touch, posting them on a Facebook page. (And yes, with over 81,000 fans, she's more popular than you are.)

The truth is that the ape's motivations have nothing to do with artistic self-expression: the camera is rigged to dispense raisins when she clicks the shutter.

"Of course the apes don't care about the pictures, they are just an accidental side product," a zoo spokesman has been widely quoted as saying, but in case you're not convinced, the esteemed National Geographic took it upon themselves to get to the bottom of the story of this pretentious primate. In an interview, the deputy director of the zoo, Harald Schwammer, said:

The company Samsung came up with the suggestion. It was their idea to advertise their camera! For me as zoologist and curator, it is an enrichment project with some opportunities for behavioral studies. To be clear, the orang does not know that it is making pictures with the camera!

All of the orangs in the group manipulate the instrument and turn a switch. After this switch is turned, a raisin falls out. By turning the switch, the photo is taken. Therefore, the orangutan does not know that this is a camera and that they are making pictures, they are only trying to get a reward from the machine.

It is just like the elephant paintings that are going around the world with false information: elephants are not able to paint a tree or flowers; they are trained for this. There is no creative touch, no artistic approach!

We've seen before on this blog that orangs have a knack for using objects to make trouble,and Schwammer reminds us to be careful what we give an orang to play with:

There was nothing surprising concerning the orangutans' behavior. We knew that they use and manipulate every object they touch. If you give them a machine-gun, they will soon find out how to shoot it.

Photo of one of her suspicious-looking orang comrades - purely accidentally, of course - by Nonja.