Uneasy Rider

We here at Blue Crab Boulevard have done yeoman’s work keeping the world informed of the behavior of alligators. The sneeky reptiles have been known to disguise themselves in order to trap unsuspecting humans. They have pretended to be doormats, gift-wrapped packages, luggage and even as golf balls.

The camogators are back in a big way now. The newest trick is to disguise themselves as motorcycles! Then they get some willing human to raffle them off.

How do you outrun an alligator that has a top speed of more than 120mph?

Thankfully this one doesn’t bite anymore but ‘GatorBike’ as it has been dubbed is still going to turn heads and set pulses racing as it eats up the highways.

The custom-made bike, crafted from the skin and skull of a real alligator that was culled by authorities to keep their numbers down, has been created to raise funds for a wildlife charity.

Jim Jablon, owner of the Wildlife Rehabilitation of Hernando (WROH) in Florida, devised the GatorBike to raise funds for his centre. WROH rescues exotic pets that have been neglected or abused by their owners and either releases them back into the wild, re-homes them or cares for them on site.

Just wait until pets and even neighbors begin disappearing in the “lucky” winner’s neighborhood! Don’t say we didn’t warn you.

Humor aside, tickets for the raffle for the unusual bike are supposed to be available at the WROH website (which is here, I think.)

Pheasant Uprising

The pheasants are restless, sire:

As a tale of avian savagery it’s starting to have echoes of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds.

For months, the rural North Yorkshire village of Newsham has been terrorised by a very unpleasant pheasant – and no one has been spared.

Men, women, children, prams, bikes, dogs and even cars have all fallen victim to the psychopathic fowl, which some believe is out to avenge its dead relatives.

Victims have spoken of how the bird hides silently in bushes before leaping out and advancing on its terrified prey.

It has even chased village children after watching them get off the school bus.

There have been attempts to catch the predator but so far to no avail.

Expert advice for dealing with the foul-tempered fowl? Move it:

Mr Waddell said best way to deal with the bird would be to humanely capture it and relocate it away from the village.

Just think, they could box it up and ship it to another village that they don’t like! That village could box it up and ship it to another and so on.

It would be like a feathered fruitcake that just gets re-gifted.

Hot, Hot, Hot

A German man decided he needed to bring out the heavy artillery to thaw his frozen car. So he tucked a heater under the hood and went back inside the house to stay warm. The resulting explosion and fire totaled the car and scorched the siding on the house.

A 76-year-old German man trying to thaw out his car incinerated it instead when he decided to speed things up by putting a blow heater under the hood.

Now, we really are not sure what, exactly, a “blow heater” is. Is it a salamander heater (kerosene fired with forced air (the sound closely resembles a jet taking off) or an electric heat gun, sort of like a blow dryer, but with a serious attitude? Or just a forced air electric heater? We simply don’t know.

Heck, it could have been a goat for all we know:

Side note: We here at Blue Crab Boulevard plan on using rubber gloves to handle all currency in the future. We simply cannot be sure where it comes from.

Another Boaring Story

More bad British bacon in the news:

Some of the first wild boar to roam free in England for 300 years have been raiding rubbish bins, attacking dogs and digging up green spaces in villages scattered around England’s first national forest park.

Recent snow and icy weather has interrupted rubbish collection service in the Forest of Dean leaving tempting treats in local bins that have attracted the boar, which ordinarily forage for shoots, leaves, bulbs, worms and carrion.

Some areas in the forest, which is in the west of England close to the border with Wales, have not seen garbage collection since before the Christmas holidays.

The porcine pests were accidentally released in the area when farmed porkers escaped following a truck accident. There are the usual apologists claiming that the feral creatures belong there since Britain used to have wild boar.

Britain also used to have knights who essentially owned the peasantry. And drawing and quartering, they used to have that.

What struck me most about this story is that bit about some areas not having seen garbage collection since before Christmas. I know there has been rather a lot of snow on the other side of the pond. But that fact speaks volumes about the sad state of affairs in Britain. We have been hammered by snow where I live – and my garbage service has not missed a single collection. (I pay for my service directly, of course, since I live well outside of any town.) But the nearby cities missed garbage collections on a few days during the worst weather – but were back to normal pickups within days. If garbage collection had been suspended this long, there would be serious problems for the politicians in those cities.

Anyway, back to the porky pirates. Whether the apologists care to admit it or not, wild boar – or wild feral pigs pretending to be wild boar (the story muddles the details more than a little) – are extremely dangerous creatures. It is literally only a matter of time until there is an incident involving a human. Because of the overflowing garbage situation, the bacon with an attitude is now becoming habituated with humans and their garbage. There will be an incident unless the feral boars/pigs are removed.

Practice Makes Perfect

The GOP Mascot Precision Drill Team practices their 2010 election signature routine, the Donkey Stomp.

Kamikaze Iguanas!

They’re dropping like – well – iguanas in South Florida!

Scientists said these seemingly suicidal lizards are a result of South Florida’s record cold weather. Iguanas prefer temperatures in the 80s and 90s. With Wednesday morning’s temperatures at around 35 degrees, a handful of lifeless lizards hung from branches and fell to the ground.

While these iguanas appeared dead, experts said they are not. When temperatures drop below 40 degrees, iguanas go into a type of hibernation in which their bodies essentially turn off, only allowing the heart to pump blood. When the temperature rises above 40 degrees again, the iguanas are revived.

They actually have video of the hurtling reptiles!

A word of warning however. This is actually a trick on the part of the wily iguanas. They are actually attempting to infiltrate the homes of Floridians. If a human picks up the seemingly dead iguana to dispose of or to show to friends, the iguana will come to life as soon as it is exposed to the warmth of the human’s home! Then it takes control of the beer supply and the television remote and will watch the Texas-Alabama game tonight.

Ladies, please do not mistake your husband or significant other for a revived iguana tonight.

Those Dam Kangaroos

Man’s best friend – and man – assaulted by dam kangaroo:

A ROGUE kangaroo put a Victoria man in hospital after he tried to stop it from drowning his dog in a farm dam.

Chris Rickard, 49, of Arthurs Creek, sustained deep cuts to his abdomen and face after being attacked by the kangaroo as he tried to free his dog, which was being held underwater by the animal.

That would be a dam kangaroo, a particularly difficult subspecies. Spraying is not generally effective. Possibly using the correct bait in traps would work, however.

It’s What’s For Dinner

Australia inaugurates a new crocodile feeding program:

A pair of bikini-clad women have been pictured risking life and limb dancing on top of a trap in a crocodile infested river.

Clutching champagne bottles, the girls were snapped singing and cavorting atop the trap in the Australian Northern Territory’s Maningrida river.

The picture surfaced just a day after the Northern Territory News published an image of two male tourists behaving in a similar fashion at Jim Jim Falls in Kakadu National Park.

My 17-year old daughter saw the picture that accompanies the article from a distance and immediately said, “Moron. It’s what’s for dinner”, which pretty well wraps it up. (I ’spect there will be a lot of out clicks).

A View From A Webcam

Smart politicians are right now looking at the images from the huge protest rally in Washington, DC today and calculating their odds of voting for ObamaCare and surviving the next election.

The odds are not really good.

In fact, the view for many politicians right now probably looks a lot like the view from this webcam:

A blue tit appears to dwarf buildings, cars and people as it rampages down a city street but the strange photograph is the effect of the bird getting too close to a webcam.

The difference being that the giant bird is an illusion. The other view is not. That’s the one the politicians need to worry about.  

This might be an illusion:

This is not:

(Crowd photo via Glenn Reynolds)

The Giant Rat Of Sumatra Papua New Guinea

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle never did write The Tale of the Giant Rat of Sumatra. He did mention it in one of his Sherlock Holmes stories, but there was never an explanation as to why the tale had never been told. Perhaps it was because he couldn’t find the rat.

Scientists have discovered a new species of giant rat in a remote rainforest in Papua New Guinea.

Measuring 82 centimeters (32.2 inches) from nose to tail and weighing around 1.5 kilograms (3.3 pounds), the species is thought to be one of the largest rats ever to be found.

The discovery was made by a team from the BBC Natural History Unit inside the crater of Mount Bosavi — an extinct volcano in the Southern Highlands province of Papua New Guinea.

“This is one of the world’s largest rats. It’s a true rat, the same kind you find in the city sewers,” said Kristofer Helgen, a biologist from the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, who was part of the expedition team.

Initial examinations of the rat — provisionally named the Bosavi woolly rat — suggest that it belongs to the Mallomys — a genus of rodents in the muridae family which are the largest living species of rodent.

That’s a lot of rat in one package.

All we here at the Crabitat know is that we have no desire whatsoever to see one in person. We have seen garden-variety sewer rats that were actually larger than that and we still have the mental scars.

We do, however, wonder if this team of scientists may not have stumbled onto a breeding site used by the Animal Uprising™. Just in case, we are setting the automatic flamethrower turrets on “Full Vaporization”.

One can’t be too careful.

Going Green

Pepsi Green is out. But you might not want a can.

The “disgusting” blob in Fred DeNegri’s Diet Pepsi can was probably a frog or toad, the Food and Drug Administration said.

DeNegri was grilling in his backyard tiki bar in Ormond Beach, Florida, when he popped open a can of Diet Pepsi, took a big gulp and started gagging, his wife, Amy, said.

He emptied out the can down a sink but something heavy remained inside. He shook the can until something resembling “pink linguini” slid out, followed by “dark stuff,” Amy DeNegri said.

But the heavy object inside the can never came out, she said.

“It was disgusting,” said Amy DeNegri, 54. “And now, what started out as a normal afternoon in our tiki bar has blown up into this crazy thing.”

The DeNegris took pictures before calling poison control and the FDA, which showed up the next day to examine the can in question and collect it for lab testing.

The couple received a copy of the completed report last week from the Food and Drug Administration Office of Regulatory Affairs, which concluded the foreign matter appeared to be a frog or a toad.

“The animal was lacking internal organs normally found in the abdominal and thoracic cavity,” the report notes.

Personally, I’d still be throwing up. Judging from the rest of the story, it does not sound as if Pepsi is handling this well at all. I’m also quite sure that the family home now has a nice, new, thick hedge in front of it.

Made up entirely of lawyers. 

Exit question: Has anyone seen Kermit lately?

All Your Luggage Are Belong Us

The Animal Uprising™ takes a new turn – and that lovely summer dress your wife just bought.

A group of tearaway baboons are wreaking havoc on a safari park after learning to crack open rooftop luggage boxes and escaping with visitors’ goods.
Keepers at Knowsley Safari Park have been forced to issue warnings after the opportunistic primates developed a taste for human possessions.

The cheeky monkeys – who are known for tearing off the odd wiper or wing mirror – have been targeting cars carrying the roof boxes before pouncing on the unsuspecting visitors, who are forced to watch helplessly as their things disappear.

Now bosses at the Merseyside park have slapped the artful animals with what they call ‘Anti Social Baboon Orders’ and have warned visitors not to travel through the infamous monkey jungle with luggage on their roof.

Pictures of the cross-species dressing terrorists at the link. We here at Blue Crab Boulevard find this development disturbing. Obviously, the baboons are in league with the snakes and are stealing shoes to sell to the reptiles.

It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad House

Mark Steyn:

…On Friday, the House passed the Restore Our American Mustangs Act – or ROAM. Like all acronymically cute legislation, its name bears little relation to what it actually does: It’s not about “restoring” mustangs. The federal Bureau of Land Management aims for a manageable population of 27,000 wild mustangs. Currently, there are 36,000, and the population doubles every four or five years. To prevent things getting even more out of hand, the BLM keeps another 30,000 mustangs in holding pens – or, if you prefer, managed-care facilities. That’s to say, under federal management, one in every two “wild” horses now lives in government housing. The American mustang population is road-testing the impending demographic profile of Japan and Germany: one worker for every retiree.

The welfare mustangs are supposed to be put up for adoption. But, what with the government taking all our money to fund the Barney Frank Institute of Bureaucracy Studies, many of us no longer have the necessary discretionary income to stable a mustang in the rec room. A lot of the nags in managed-care facilities are getting a bit long in the tooth, and thus are unlikely ever to find homes. So, rather than go on attempting to flog near-dead horses, the BLM was considering inviting the seniors to do the decent thing and sign up for “assisted suicide” – or, in the designated euphemism, “death with dignity.” In the Netherlands, pretty much everyone over 47 who goes into hospital for a minor hernia winds up getting talked into “death with dignity.” And, given that mustangs were introduced to America by the Spanish, it’s not inappropriate that they should meet a European end.

ROAM would prohibit this option…..

Read the whole thing. There is a lot more that will simply amaze you in this bill.

This little gem of madness will cost a mere $700 million or so. Certainly not much compared to other mega-spending the House is playing with. But it does come out to around $10,500 for each mustang.

This is our money they are playing with, not their own. This is just part of the completely mad agenda in Washington these days. With the idea of “cost effective” (read “No care for you”) medical treatment for the elderly already being floated openly, they are giving money away to wild mustangs. Granny gets a handful of pills jammed down her throat, the burro gets Federal support.

No death with dignity for horses, Federal employees, Congressmen or Senators.

Just for you and yours. Thanks for paying for all this, have some pills.

Here’s the roll call vote, feel free to thank your Congressman for their important vote on this matter.

Prey

Or should that be “Pray”. As in, you might really want to pray you have someone nearby with some hefty firepower if a cougar decides you or your children are the blue plate special.

Three cougars that appeared to be stalking people were shot in Princeton, B.C., during the last two weeks, and a veteran conservation officer says he’s never seen anything like it.

The first cougar was spotted lurking near a campground in the southern Interior town on July 3, CBC News has learned.

B.C. conservation officer Al Lay shot the big cat out of concern it may have been stalking people.

“It was close to residences and campsites on the other side, and it was just one of those situations where it is better safe than sorry…. We just can’t take the chance of someone being hurt. Sometimes it’s not pleasant but it’s something we have to do,” said Lay.

On July 10 another cougar was spotted in Princeton following two girls tubing down a river. A local resident was so worried he got his gun, according Princeton Mayor Randy McLean.

“The fellow noticed the cougar was crouched, observing the two girls as if he could pounce at any moment, and he shot the cougar,” said McLean.

A day later, a third cougar was spotted hanging around a softball tournament right across from the RCMP station.

“RCMP members went across the road and unfortunately dispatched the animal to prevent anything tragic from happening,” Cpl. Dan Moskaluk told CBC News.

That would be “unfortunately” for the cougar, one presumes. Or one hopes the RCMP is more concerned with the folks that pay their salaries than they are with carnivores who appear to be targeting said taxpayers. 

Pray you have some well-heeled folks nearby you or your children in a situation like this.

Must Guard Master

Sadly, Australia’s surrender to the Animal Uprising™ is complete. They are now deploying super special snipers to guard their penguin masters.

Australia has posted snipers to protect endangered penguins in its biggest city, Sydney, after a spate of attacks, officials said on Tuesday.

The National Parks and Wildlife Service deployed its own marksmen as well as infrared cameras and traps after nine penguins were mauled to death by dogs or foxes in bushland to the city’s north.

Parks officials have carried out autopsies on the dead penguins and are also using DNA testing to try to track their killers.

“We’ve been working really hard to try to protect the endangered little penguins since we’ve had nine killed in the last couple of weeks,” a spokeswoman told AFP.

Protection or obedience? We report, you decide. We here at Blue Crab Boulevard suspect the latter, of course. The little guys in the tuxes are calling the shots – literally.