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!

Not safe in our own homes

You might think you're safe from animals as long as you stay indoors and aren't foolish enough to invite any to live with you. But animal home invasion is an escalating trend.

In December we saw a seal lounging on a sofa and a bear living in a basement. In October it was a deer breaking into a man's home workshop. And this is leaving aside bears breaking into more public places like pizza shops and candy stores and bovines in bars and shopping malls.

And here are three more reports from all over the world, just in the past month:

-On Christmas Eve, a family in Utah was expecting their holiday to include only fictional deer. But a large buck crashed through a window, spending two hours trampling furniture and gifts before wildlife officers could arrive to subdue it.

-In the suburbs of a city in China, a red panda tried to sneak into a home while the residents were picnicking in the yard - although it appeared to have second thoughts once they started taking video of it.

-In perhaps the most frightening case, a 74-year-old woman in England had to save her Chihuahua from a hawk. The raptor first attacked the pup on the patio, then followed it into the house. After wrestling the bird off the dog three times, she finally chased it out. The brave woman told reporters, “I just said ‘you’re damn not going to kill him’."

Keep your doors locked and your windows barred... and come back Monday for more reasons to watch your back.

This is how deer thank you

Are you still dubious about the risk posed by deer, even after reading last week's post about head-butting, doorbell-ringing, home-invading Bambis? Maybe you thought the man with the deer in his workshop was being overly dramatic when he said "I was just defending myself. It was either me or the deer."

Well, perhaps exactly when I was writing that post on Sunday evening, a man in Canada was killed by his own herd of "tame" deer.

The man went out to feed the deer and when he didn't return home, his wife called police, who found him dead among "signs of a struggle so violent" that the body was missing a boot and a sock.

While it's important to note that any large hoofed animal can do considerable damage at any time of year, a police spokesman described the particulars of the situation the victim had faced in graphic detail:

"Adult male deer this time of year have significant antlers and in the wild they are very adept at using them to fend off predators —coyotes, foxes, rabid dogs, what have you."

He said the bucks use their racks to pin their adversary to the ground, then put all their weight on them.

"All their weight is on their neck and they'll grind. Those antlers are sharp and they'll poke skin and muscle tissue very easily."

And apparently the fact that you're bringing them food - and have been feeding them all their lives - doesn't eliminate the risk. So don't let down your guard around those those big brown eyes.

Another deer warning sign, thanks to Flickr user s.yume, this time from Nara, Japan where they let these animals roam freely in the streets. So add that to your list of places not to visit in Japan along with the monkey park in Oita from last time. Maybe you should stick to Tokyo - wait, except for the crow attacks...

Justifiable Bambicide

Sometimes I feel ambivalent about covering animals such as the bears in the last post. Surely nearly everyone knows to be afraid of bears, and there's much higher profile media putting its weight behind bear awareness. But so many are unaware that animals with a cute and cuddly reputation are just as likely to commit violent acts - and they're coming after us.

Take deer. Sure, they take a toll on our gardens, but they're so lovely and graceful and who can resist those cute spotted babies with the big Bambi eyes? Surely the only danger we have to worry about is hitting them with our cars, right?

Well, to start, deer are a threat even when your car isn't moving. In Massachusetts, one walked up to a vehicle and head-butted a man through the open window. “I saw cartilage or what I thought was cartilage -- a bone and blood just gushing all over my face,” he said, and ended up in the hospital for seven stitches and treatment of a broken nose.

But never mind cars: deers are walking right up to people's homes. An Ontario woman is being harassed by deer who ring her doorbell. Modifications to the doorbell button have not thwarted them, and when one morning these hooligans awakened her so early that she came to the door with her cane and cursed at them, the offending doe merely responded by snorting and scratching the ground threateningly.

Her nephew cautioned against confronting them - “Don't you know they could put a hoof right through you?" A wise warning, because not all deer who come to your house are merely pranksters, as a man in Ithaca, New York, learned.

Deer are a common sight on Tom Hartshorn's property, but he was clearly unaware of the risk they present: they'd often slept on his porch, and when his son was five, he was allowed to rub noses with a fawn.

So when he stepped outside and startled a buck that crashed through a window into his workshop, Hartshorn was unprepared for what followed.

"I went in thinking it would be like shooing a rabbit away," he said. "But the next thing I know, I am in the battle of my life."

Hartshorn entered and attempted to steer the eighty pound animal towards the door with a shovel, but it went after him. After a struggle managed to whack the deer on the head, and the blow was apparently fatal.

Frighteningly, this sort of incident is not as rare as you might think. A local expert says that he's called a couple of times a year about deer in buildings on the Cornell campus. He advises that you treat this situation like any other dangerous intruder: Call the police.

Hartshorn will no doubt take that advice next time. He never meant to commit Bambicide, he said, but he had no choice: "I was just defending myself. It was either me or the deer."


Your pets are not safe either - thanks for the warning to Flickr user CGP Grey.

Holiday Season Horror

Few animals can boast of a more positive reputation than reindeer. Sure, pandas have good publicity year-round. But it's hard to compete with an animal that has a gig like this one. It's a brilliant strategy: Get the kid when he's way too young to have any critical thinking skills and can be fooled into believing that quadrupeds without wings can fly. Then make up a story that they're critical to the delivery of those precious holiday presents. So even when he doesn't believe in Santa anymore, he's left with a warm fuzzy feeling about these animals for the rest of his life.

So you might think the only danger associated with these deer is that they have an inside track to letting Santa know that you've been naughty. But a woman in Scotland who had a narrow escape can tell you differently.

As reported by The Telegraph, she was taking a hike in the area where Britain's only reindeer herd lives, a tourist attraction introduced in the 1950s, when a buck knocked her on her back:

"One of my walking poles was thrown into the air. The reindeer kept trying to stick its antlers into me but I managed to brace my feet on them.

"I began bashing it over the head with my other walking pole. Its antlers were pretty big and it had one sticking straight out in front.

"I couldn't believe what was happening, and I was aware that I was running out of strength. I was shouting for help but there was no-one there.

"I couldn't keep it at bay any longer and collapsed in a heap with my rucksack protecting my back. I tried to get up with my back to the reindeer but it got an antler under the strap of my rucksack and pulled me over backwards.

"It was behind me and its antlers were sticking forward either side of me. I grabbed them to try and avoid getting stabbed and it started to bump me along the ground. Eventually, I fell and landed in a heap."

She said she realised that if she lay still it stopped attacking but she was knocked over again as she tried to make her way downhill and only reached safety when she managed to climb over a fence.

By then she had walked more than two miles and descended 1,200ft while throwing parts of her packed lunch to distract the reindeer.

So if you still believe in leaving cookies and milk out for Santa, don't forget to leave something for his draft animals as well - you may get a lot worse than coal in your stocking if you get them mad at you.



(And also watch out for pugs forced to dress as Santa's crew who are mad enough about it to bite you.)

Bad influences

It's been far too long since we called attention to substance abuse in the animal kingdom. Setting a particularly bad example is a chimp in China with a smoking habit. Yes, he died recently, but:

Zoo spokesman Qondile Khedama said Charlie had become an institution, entertaining thousands of visitors every year with his antics.

For years, zookeepers had been trying to get the chimp to kick the habit, and they discouraged visitors from giving him cigarettes.

But Mr Khedama said he did not believe the addiction had ended Charlie's life prematurely, as he had lived around 10 years longer than the average chimp.

And in Austria, some zoo rhinos were directly responsible for enabling one man's drug habit:

An Austrian zoo has fired a zookeeper after discovering that he had been secretly growing a cannabis plantation in the rhinoceros enclosure he was in charge of. It was a clever scheme because the 59-year-old man had exclusive access to the enclosure at Salzburg Zoo, and the presence of the notoriously irritable one-ton beasts was likely to deter the curious.

But perhaps the most disturbing case reported recently is that of a deer at a resort in China. A few months ago, a waitress offered the animal a taste of some beer, and it was the first step on a descent into alcoholism:

Since then, says Zhang, whenever there is any leftover beer she takes it to feed to the deer.

"It has a growing addiction to beer. To begin with it was half a bottle but now it is several big bottles in a row. Her daily feed is around two bottles of beer."

Zhang adds: "I don't know what her maximum appetite for beers is though we once tried giving her four bottles of beer and she drank them all."

Elsewhere the restaurant's chef is quoted:

"It drinks beer quite often. It does not drink water any more, it only drinks beer."

Some say that drug abusers hurt only themselves, but when people foolishly believe that animals are cute and noble, we run the risk of their behavior being used as a role model, especially by innocent youth. What are our children to think when they see Bambi guzzling beer?