Foxes Stealing Boulder Shoes

Boulder, Colorado. June 26, 2008.

"The mother fox and her cubs have been skipping from porch to porch, picking up shoes and gloves and dropping them in different yards."

Rat Snakes Infiltrate UPS

Roy, Utah. June 25, 2008

Woman opens a package and finds two stowaway black rat snakes along with her merchandise.

"Her cat took great interest." Second post of the day about a cat being 'interested' in snakes. Curious.

Article also notes that the woman called 911, asking for the National Guard. Sounds extreme. The situation might have been more serious than the story lets on.

Cat - Snake Conspiracy?

Snyder, Colorado. June 27, 2008

Not quite sure how this fits in, but it is certainly suspicious.

To summarize: snake crawls up on a fence. Cat investigates. Back-and-forth between the cat and the squirrel. Cat and snake both leave at the same time.

Obviously, some sort of communication is going on between the two, but of what significance? Pay no attention to the numbnut commentators who call the story pointless; ignore these things and next thing you know your cat is tipping over the kerosene lantern as you sleep. Idiots.

Oh, just one more thing. The URL for the link is http://www.9news.com/news/watercooler/article.aspx? storyid=94603&catid=337. Catch that at the end? catid=337. So they have assigned id's to suspicious cats, and and over three hundred of them at that. Interesting.

Why They Hate Us

Drove into work Thursday. In a three mile stretch of highway, I counted the carcasses of one rabbit, four prairie dogs, and one fox.

Hearts and minds, people. Hearts and minds.

Muskrat Breaches Levee

Winfield, Missouri. June 27, 2008

"The furry rodent dug a hole through the earthen levee in this eastern Missouri community, allowing water to penetrate the floodwall, which failed shortly before dawn."

"With all the guns in this county, couldn't we kill a muskrat?"

Ummm, no offense, but the Army spokesperson was from the Corps of Engineers. Not a real Army corps, and not a combat organization. Missouri should have made like its northern neighbor and deployed automatic weaponry.

Iowa Hogs Attempt To Sabotage Levee

Burlington, Iowa. June 19, 2008

Fifteen hogs escaped from several "large hog confinement facilities" and tried to tear down a levee on the swollen Cedar River before being shot by sheriff's deputies.

Ok, so score one for our side. The flooding in Iowa is no joke, and these hogs could have caused significant damage. This should give us all pause.

I'm not getting complacent. There were a few troubling items in the article. "Confinement facility" -- meaning a prison? So these hogs are dangerous enough that they need to be jailed (albeit apparently at insecure facilities). Secondly, the deputies were equipped with AR-15 semiautomatic rifles. That's a lot of firepower to bring down fifteen pigs. You'd think a local farmer or two could handle them, but apparently the sheriff's department and the National Guard needed to get involved.

Just what is going on with the hogs in Iowa?

Rabid Bats Heading To Boulder County

Boulder, Colorado; June 6, 2008

I'd be ready for some sort of bat-skunk-coyote Axis of Rabies.

Rabid Skunks Invading the Front Range

Denver, Colorado; May 29, 2008

Rabid skunks "may be circulating in eastern areas of the state and potentially moving west toward the Front Range." Article goes on to state that there have been eight confirmed cases of rabies: seven skunks and one coyote.

Not clear what the deal with the coyote is: a skunk wannabe? Or their leader?

Squirrel Causes Blackout

Lafayette, Colorado; June 12, 2008

Squirrel breaks into a fuse box, knocking out power to sixty homes and shutting off the traffic lights at Arapahoe and US 287. Not sure, but I'm assuming the intent was to cause an accident. Or maybe that was a diversion while other squirrels raised some mayhem in one of those sixty homes.

Curious wording in the article:

"The outage was caused by a squirrel that got into a fuse box, and lasted from 6:48 a.m. until 8:24 a.m."

The squirrel lasted from 6:48 until 8:24? I took that to mean that the squirrel got fried at 8:24, but Brodi envisioned a police standoff with the squirrel holding out until then, dodging bullets and yelling at the coppers to come and get him. We need clarification.

Deer Attacking Boulder Residents

Boulder Colorado; June 25, 2008

Supposedly it's just a matter of does protecting their fawns, but I'd be on my toes. Of note: the deer are also going after dogs, those traitors.

Also note that this happened one day after a deer was seen collaborating with the bear that ambushed the cyclist. The deer may be getting restless.

Cat Sets Fire To House

Bangor Maine; October 10, 2007

Cat tips over a kerosense lantern at 3:30am and burns the house down. Of note, the family was saved by the dog. A traitor to the cause, perhaps?

Chillingly, the cat was only singed by the flames. Article says that currently, "the family is staying in Greenville with a family friend."My recommendation to the family friend: let the cat sleep outside.

Bear Ambushes Cyclist

Boulder, Colorado; June 24, 2008

Bear crossing Old Stage Road outside of Boulder collides with bicyclist, cracking the latter's ribs.

A few curious points:

1. The cyclist's companion noted that they saw the bear "from a distance", yet they apparently felt no need to slow down or otherwise use caution . . . so all the animals have to do is stand in the road and let us run into them ? . . . yikes, let's not make it easy on them.

2. After the collision, a deer came onto the scene, and was promptly chased off by the bear. I presume the deer was some sort of trainee; the bear chased it off because it was not supposed to be seen? Hard to say.

Final words (from the cylist): "I wanted people to know to watch out for bears". You've been warned.

Gerbil Crushes Two People's Legs

Springville, Utah, June 18 2008.

Pet gerbil escapes from its cage while en route; driver tried to catch the gerbil, and lost control, causing a chain accident. Two people injured.

Ominous ending to the article: "The gerbil was not injured." I worry we may be hearing from this gerbil again.

Welcome

When I was nine years old, I read a condensed version of The Birds. Scared the living heck out of me for weeks.

Good theme for a book, though, animals ganging up on humans. I always thought it would be great fun to write another book in the same vein, but with a less obvious animal adversary, such as cows or squirrels.

Growing older, I became more complacent about mankind's superiority over beast and fowl. And yet, a while back, my friend Brodi and I started exchanging links to articles about various animal-induced mayhem. It was funny for a while, but the frequency of such stories soon became unnerving. With this blog I want to collate such reports of animals taking the fight to the humans. Isolated incidents, or patterns in something larger?

The stories you are about to be linked to are all true.