This Week's Weirdest Wild Animal Encounters

A feral cat broke into a Russian airport and ate $1,000 worth of seafood, a black bear beat up a Santa Claus, and a tiger released into the wild by Vladimir Putin was caught on camera devouring a pet dog in China for two hours.
Orangutan mother Mali and baby Tatau open Christmas presents at Paignton Zoo Devon Britain Dec. 15 2014.
Orangutan mother Mali and baby Tatau open Christmas presents at Paignton Zoo, Devon, Britain, Dec. 15, 2014.AP
This Week in Wild Animals for December 19

A feral cat broke into a Russian airport and ate $1,000 worth of seafood, a black bear beat up a Santa Claus, and a tiger released into the wild by Vladimir Putin was caught on camera devouring a pet dog in China for two hours.

This Week in Wild Animals is a public service for human beings compiled by Jon Mooallem, author of the book Wild Ones.A free-ranging monkey was “terrorizing” the French suburb of Marseilles after falling in with the wrong crowd of “local youths” who fed it a steady diet of Kinder chocolates. The monkey eluded police for weeks, scratching small children on one rampage through an elementary school, before it was finally located and Tased. The chocolate, one report noted, “could explain its aggressive attitude.”

Squirrels in the arctic were exacerbating climate change by digging holes in the permafrost and peeing in them. Squirrels in Tampa chewed through power lines at a university’s substation on two consecutive days, causing black outs that effected 7,000 people. (“It was very confusing,” one freshman said. “My professor cancelled my math final,” said another.) In Colorado, a squirrel stole Luis Cerezo’s holiday muffins.

A mountain lion was spotted in Kentucky for the first time since before the Civil War; a police officer shot it. A 70-year old Iowa man accidentally shot himself while bending over to release an opossum from a trap. Airport officials in Anchorage confiscated 200 turtles stuffed in boots.

The discovery of a rare pink-footed goose in New Jersey capped off an exhilarating week of “uncommon-to-rare wintering geese” sightings in the state. Elsewhere in New Jersey, a woman shot video of a wild unicorn. “My daughter was thrilled!” she said. “And for me it was a childhood fantasy come true.” After examining the video, the woman’s husband suggested the animal was just a deer with one antler, but the woman remained unmoved: “But I saw it,” she insisted. “Nobody is going to convince me otherwise.”

Benjy the Gay Bull arrives at new home The Hillside Animal Sanctuary, Norfolk, Britain, Dec. 14, 2014.

AP

A very angry rhinoceros assaulted a camera. A gay bull, saved from slaughter by a co-creator of the Simpsons, may have found love.

A skunk in South Carolina tested positive for rabies. Feral hogs in Oklahoma tested positive for pseudorabies. Half-inch faucet snails were invading the Great Lakes, threatening to infect waterfowl with intestinal parasites. Scientists could not determine if the snails were attaching themselves to boats, or to ducks, but one thing was for sure: “They’re not going from Toledo to Saginaw on their own.”

A moose meandering around the campus of Amherst college was proposed as the school’s new mascot. Students considered the lackadaisical moose less “genocidal” than the current mascot, a big-headed, eighteenth century British Lord who allegedly gave Native Americans small pox blankets.

A beaver was wreaking havoc in a park outside Cincinnati (“So far only been there a few days and he’s cut down 52 trees,” an official explained), police in Milford, Massachusetts received reports of a skunk and opossum having a fight in someone’s backyard, and a gang of wolves attacking a baby bison were scared away by two delighted ladies in a taxi.

Zimbabwe reportedly rounded up 100 baby elephants and planned to export them to Chinese zoos, advancing a policy laid out earlier this year by one of President Robert Mugabe’s top-ranking officials (“We are not interested in wildlife…we want cash”) The state of Wisconsin was negotiating a deal to import 150 wild elk from Kentucky. “We are in the final stages,” a spokesperson said. A man roped a deer by its antlers and drowned it in the Mississippi River. In Marin County, a deer leapt into a bicyclist.

Police shot a 1,000-pound cow after chasing it through the streets of Pocatello, Idaho. (“During the pursuit,” one report noted, “the cow rammed a Pocatello animal control truck and two police cars.”) And police chased an aggressive ram through the streets of New Jersey for 40 minutes before finally shooting it. An officer explained that it was not easy, but “We had to put an end to its shenanigans.”

A wild turkey flew into a woman’s car outside Cleveland, shattering her windshield. Canada revived its beloved “Moose Sex Project” for Christmas. A 15-foot python was trapped in the doorway of a Florida real estate office.

A polish farmer shot a popular feral bison, convinced that the animal was “seducing his cows.” The cows, the farmer explained, had stopped returning to their barn every night for milking; they preferred to linger in the field with the bison instead. Locals mourned the bison. The town’s mayor explained, “Despite his great size he was very gentle and was even given the name Bartek.”

A Vermont church was hosting an evening of ballroom dance instruction and meet-and-greet with an opossum named Johnny Rotten as a fundraiser for a wildlife rehabilitator named Patti Smith. An escaped bald eagle named Freedom was trapped and sent back to captivity.

All the world celebrated Taipei’s “Hero Tortoise,” a Taiwanese tortoise that assisted another, forlorn tortoise that was stranded on its back by clumsily flipping the upside-down-tortoise right-side-up again. “Tortoise comes to aid of overturned tortoise,” one headline read. “Hero tortoise helps friend get back on his feet,” was another. More than 1.5 million people watched footage of the rescue operation online.

Orangutans at a British zoo were given brightly colored Christmas presents to unwrap to stave off boredom and depression. Asked why one of the orangutans had taken to compulsively shrouding itself in a burlap sack while unwrapping her presents, a spokesman said: “We think it has less to do with the cold, but more of a fashion statement.” The packages contained Brussels sprouts.