This week's collection of whimsical and curious stories will once again consider Europe and its sometimes awkward relationship with the local fauna. In a previous edition of this format, we already learned about the adventures of Europe's most famous bears ("Bruno" and "Papillion") and how a lack of natural habitats can create conflict between wild animals and humans.
However, rather than coming into conflict over food (by eating sheep and ravaging beehives), today's protagonists became famous by stealing a laptop and a gun (respectively).
Elsa the wild boar - Our protagonist in this story is a wild boar called "Elsa". Elsa is a resident of the forest surrounding the Teufelssee lake close to Berlin and generated some global headlines this summer which all pretty much sum up the incident:
There are also some rather silly pictures of the incident online for those who crave more than headlines. However, while the whole world was laughing at this, forestry officials in the motherland of humour seemed less impressed and announced that the animal would have to be “withdrawn as a matter of priority” (bureaucratic language for shooting it). This being Berlin, a coalition soon assembled to protect "the cheeky swine" with protests and a petition to save her life. A story likely to be continued..
A well-armed deer - Our second protagonist today does not yet appear to have a name but arguably deserves one. It all started in November 2020 when a Czech hunter had to report to the local police the somewhat embarrassing fact that a deer had stolen his hunting rifle and had run off with it. Apparently, the deer had been frightened by a dog and ran towards the hunting party whereupon the rifle caught in the deer's antlers and disappeared with it in the woods.
The animal was later spotted a kilometer away still carrying the weapon (Link). Surprisingly this happened in the Czech Republic rather than in Texas (where animals are of course known to routinely exercise their Second Amendment rights - link)
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