Animals & Insects

Via AFP:

LONDON — The strongest and most expensive beer ever created sold out within hours Friday, a Scottish brewery said, as they courted controversy by packaging the bottles inside the bodies of stuffed animals.

BrewDog, the self-described maverick brewery, presented the beer — which contains a record 55 percent alcohol — inside the bodies of dead squirrels and stoats.

Animal rights activists rushed to condemn the stunt.

“It’s pointless and it’s very negative to use dead animals when we should be celebrating live animals,” Advocates for Animals policy director Libby Anderson told BBC Scotland.

“This seems to be a perverse idea.”

BrewDog said the limited edition Belgian ale — made with juniper berries and dubbed “The End of History” — was also the costliest beer ever sold.

The squirrel bottles cost 700 pounds (1,000 dollars, 840 euros) each and the seven stoat bottles went for 500 pounds a pop.

All sold out within four hours of going on sale, BrewDog managing director James Watt told AFP.

Watt said the controversial drink was the last in a line of experimental brews, explaining: “For the final installment in the strong beer series, we wanted to create something epic, something monumental.”

He said there were no plans to come up with a beer to beat this record, insisting: “We’re quite happy at 55 percent.”

As for the taste, Watt described “The End of History” as a “complex” beer with a multitude of flavours including honey, mint and cinnamon.

He recommended sipping the drink “much like you would a malt whiskey”, served up in a spirit glass rather than a pint glass.

I can’t say that sounds appealing at all, but if that’s up your alley I’d love to hear about it.

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Via AFP & Yahoo!

MOSCOW (AFP) – Russian beachgoers got a shock when they saw a donkey soaring in the blue skies over the balmy beaches on the Sea of Azov in southern Russia last week, police said on Tuesday.

Attached to a parachute, the animal screamed in fear as it circled over heads of holidaymakers sunbathing on a beach in the Cossack village of Golubitskaya in the Krasnodar region.

A regional police spokeswoman said the donkey ended up in the skies as a result of an impromptu advertising campaign by several Russian entrepreneurs to attract beachgoers to their private beach.

Instead, they attracted the attention of regional police who learned of the flying donkey earlier this week and launched a probe.

“The donkey screamed and children cried,” regional police spokeswoman Larisa Tuchkova told AFP. “No-one had the brains to call police.”

Instead, she said, people reached for their cameras and bombarded a local newspaper with phone calls.

“It was put up so high into the sky that the children on the beach cried and asked their parents: “Why did they tie a doggy to a parachute?” the newspaper, Taman, said late last week.

“The donkey landed in an atrocious manner: it was dragged several metres along the water, after which the animal was pulled out half-alive onto the shore.”

The incident is stunning even for a country where animal cruelty is widespread and came as a shock to the locals, said Taman newspaper’s editor, Elena Iovleva.

“This has never happened before,” she told AFP.

The footage of the parachuting donkey was aired on national television Tuesday.

Wow. That’s funny & not funny at the same time. I’m not sure what to say other than if I saw a parachuting donkey calling the police would not be my first reaction either…and I’m not sure I’d even be able to find my camera to document the experience. Wow.

Thanks to my sister-in-law for sharing this oddity.

View this post at Blue Shotgun » Odd News

Pet Monkey Goes Berserk

by Brian Groce on July 21, 2010

in Brian's Blogs,Utter Oddness

Via WISH TV:

HAMILTON COUNTY (WISH) – A pet monkey went berserk Wednesday morning injuring two people and prompting a family to barricade themselves in a Hamilton County home.

Hamilton County Sheriff’s Deputies were called to a home in the 2900 block of East 276th Street after Eujo, the Patas monkey, got out of his cage.

Deputies called in animal control officer Tom Rogers who was finally able to wrangle the monkey.

The two injured people are said to have minor injuries.

The Patas monkey is said to be one of the fastest primates; it can reach speeds of 34 mph.

A few days ago it was Jungle Cats in Indiana. Today it’s a pet monkey. Seriously people, what are you thinking with your exotic pets?  I know what I’m thinking…I’m thinking that’s kind of funny and want to see a video.  You have fun with your monkey.  I’ll stick with my Zhu Zhu Pets.

View this post at Blue Shotgun » Odd News

Via WTHR:

Goshen, Ind. – The Indiana Department of Natural Resources believes a hybrid of a rare tropical jungle cat is living in a vacant lot in Goshen.

DNR spokesman Phil Bloom says an Indiana conservation officer went to investigate Wednesday after a neighbor spotted an unusually large cat living there. Bloom says experts looked at photos of the cat and believe it is a hybrid of an ocelot, which are native to South America.

Bloom says there is an online market for ocelot hybrids, which is an ocelot crossed with another kind of cat.

More crazy people with exotic pets are trying to kill us all.

View this post at Blue Shotgun » Odd News

Snake with foot found in China

by Brian Groce on September 24, 2009

in Brian's Blogs,Utter Oddness

Via Telegraph:

“I woke up and heard a strange scratching sound. I turned on the light and saw this monster working its way along the wall using his claw,” said Mrs Duan of Suining, southwest China.

You’ve got to go to their site to see the picture. This is a bit out there even for me.

View this post at Utter Oddness » Brian

Terre Haute Outlaws Feeding Cats

by Brian Groce on September 12, 2009

in Brian's Blogs,Utter Oddness

Via the Indy Star:

Giving food or water to feral cats that have not been spayed or neutered is now illegal in Terre Haute.

The new ordinance also increases the city license fee for an unsterilized cat or dog to $100, up from the current $25. Licenses for pets that have been spayed or neutered will cost $5.

So let me get this right. You’re supposed to know if a feral cat has been spayed or neutered just by looking at it? And they really desire to eliminate all cats and dogs? I’m not fond of cats and dogs, but that sounds outright crazy to me.

View this post at Utter Oddness » Brian

Piranha Caught in the Wabash

by Brian Groce on August 25, 2009

in Brian's Blogs,Utter Oddness

Via the Indy Star:

Dean Asbury was fishing with his father Sunday night near the Harrison Bridge in Lafayette (Indiana), looking for catfish, when Asbury pulled a piranha from the fishing hole.

The 21-year-old Lafayette man said he had no idea what kind of fish it was at first.

“My dad actually stuck his thumb in its mouth, because we didn’t know what it was,” Asbury said. “It bit down on him and he said, ‘It’s got teeth.’ ”

Maybe piranha’s are attracted by the stench of the Wabash River? Or maybe it was a prank on Purdue by those pesky IU kids?

View this post at Utter Oddness » Brian

Via Yahoo!:

Researchers in Texas are trying an unusual approach to combat fire ants — deploying parasitic flies that turn the pesky and economically costly insects into zombies whose heads fall off.

Read full story.

View this post at Utter Oddness » Brian

Butterfly

by Brian Groce on August 17, 2008

in Brian's Photos,One Man's Lens

 

Comment on this photo at: http://onemanslens.com/butterfly/

Fly Powered Plane

by Brian Groce on July 3, 2007

in Brian's Blogs,Utter Oddness

This is, ugh, interesting. I never knew you could harness “fly power”.

[link]

View this post at Utter Oddness » Brian