Archive for February 2011

« FOXSYLVANIA home page
« Older Entries

Outfoxed!

February 28, 2011

– – Sadly, fox hunting is popular in the farming region of Belarus that borders Poland.  It came to pass there in January that a hunter shot a poor fox from a distance, and then approached planning to bludgeon the fox to death with the butt of his rifle…swell “sport,” huh?

The fox, however, fiercely resisted these plans, scuffling although wounded with the mighty hunter and managing to pull the trigger on the hunter’s gun with his paw, shooting the 40-year-old man in the leg!   The fox then made good his escape, and the hunter wound up in the hospital.

Now that’s wily, and what I call poetic justice!




Categories: animal occurrences, furry, furry heroes, furry stories
Tags:

Comments: 2 Comments

Scotland Invaded!

February 26, 2011

– – Scotland has been overrun by vicious invaders, and their goal is to kill them all!  Once the invaders are driven out of Scotland, plans are to drive them out of the whole of Britain.

Now this isn’t a William Wallace thing and Mel Gibson is nowhere to be seen,  but it’s rather a campaign against American minks brought to Britain in the 1950’s to be farmed for fur coats.  Now running wild by the tens of thousands, the minks are wrecking havoc on other native species, including birds, fish, frogs, and the beloved water vole!   About 95% of the water voles are gone, thanks in large measure to the minks.   Scottish novelist Kenneth Grahame used a water vole named Ratty as a main character in his children’s book, The Wind in the Willows.

Considered an invasive species, the minks are usually trapped and then shot.  While this sounds cruel, the Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals says the process is humane and necessary in order to protect Scotland’s ecosystem.  To quote Ratty the water vole, “It’s my world.  I don’t want any other.”



Categories: animal occurrences, animals, environmental, furry
Tags: ,

Comments: 1 Comment

The Domestic Fox…

February 24, 2011

– – I always try to advise people that foxes make lousy pets; we sleep in too late, eat entirely too much junk food, and lounge around in our underwear, scratching.  Besides that, foxes are wild animals, as anyone who has seen us at conventions can testify!

That having been said, however, there have been a few rare cases when people have successfully made pets of foxes, although we would prefer to think that we have made pets of the humans;  you won’t catch me cleaning up after them, no sir-ee-bob!   As a case in point let me introduce you to Miss Snooks, a comely vixen in East Sussex, England who was taken in seven years ago as an abandoned cub by a couple.  She lives in her own one bedroom flat above the couple’s pet shop,

Reared by hand and used to people, Miss Snooks dozes on a sofa, plays hide-and-seek in a den of blankets, goes for evening walks, and enjoys her favorite meals of roast chicken cooked in honey.  Her custodians describe Miss Snooks as beautiful and very affectionate…but again, her case is an unusual one and a violation of the natural order.

Categories: animals, furry, strange happenings
Tags:

Comments: 2 Comments

–Hey, It’s “Hood!”

February 22, 2011

– – Everyone loves a werewolf, and I’ll certainly be rooting for him in Red Riding Hood, a Gothic imagining of the classic fairy tale in which a young woman is confronted by a wolf, this time with a teenage love triangle at its center.   If elements of this sound familiar, it should be…it’s by the director of the popular Twilight series.

Only loosely based on the fairy tale, they’ve tacked some years onto the title heroine’s age so as to make her eye candy, and in general sexualized the story…but selling tickets is the name of the game!   Several trailer/previews are to be found on the ‘net, where the commentary of potential viewers seems to range from, “I can’t wait to see it!,” to (my fave) “This movie is gonna rain with bad reviews!”

Coming to theaters March 11th from Warner Brothers Pictures…

Categories: furry, movies
Tags:

Comments: 3 Comments

Biting Humor?

February 20, 2011

– – I like dark humor and black comedy, but they’re not everyone’s cup of tea.  For this reason, the recent Snickers great white shark commercial has rubbed some shark conservationists and shark attack victims and their families the wrong way, plus done little to dispel the erroneous notion that humans are the preferred food source for sharks.

In the commercial, a group of well-animated and voiced-over CG great white sharks are participating in a focus group where they are questioned about a “blind taste test” of people that they have just eaten.  The preferred victim is revealed to have eaten Snickers Peanut Butter Squared, while the less tasty victim had consumed peanut butter cups.

Now the commercial is intended to be comical, harmless, and light-hearted rather than educational and sensitive, and is a vehicle intended to entertain and linger in the mind so as to sell more Snickers products.  Some contend, however, that the ad was released too close on the heels of actual shark attacks in Egypt and elsewhere, and has accordingly gone too far.- -Sick or slick?  You decide!

Categories: animals, aquatic, Brilliant but twisted, controversial, humor, television
Tags:

Comments: 2 Comments

The Return of Bownessie!

February 18, 2011

– – Last September, we had posted about Bownessie, possibly a distant relative of the Loch Ness monster native to Lake Windermere, England’s largest lake.   A recent eighth sighting of the creature in the past five years has produced the clearest photographic image yet of the elusive cryptid, revealing a creature with oily black skin and three eerie humps.

The unidentified animal was judged to be about the size of three cars by the 24-year-old kayaker and his companion who observed it, and it moved at approximately 10 miles an hour with each hump demonstrating a rippling motion.

Skeptics remain unconvinced that something of the size attributed to the creature could exist in the 11 mile long lake.  Echo sounding surveys conducted each month have revealed nothing, nor have two prior sonar scans.   A lake ecologist feels that the aquatic beast could be an Eastern European catfish misjudged as to size.  A hoax cannot be ruled out as the file size of the photo, taken on a camera phone, is too small to really tell if it had been altered on Photoshop or not…

Categories: cryptozoology, strange, strange happenings, unexplained, unidentified
Tags:

Comments: 5 Comments

Mice for Airport Security?

February 16, 2011

– – We had earlier mentioned the possible use of genetically-modified plants to detect explosives in passenger screenings at airports.  Two Israeli scientists have advanced,  however, that mice may also suffice.

Specially-trained mice have been found capable of detecting faint traces of explosive residues.  When canisters of trained mice are placed in a device and exposed to such scents, they flee to a secondary compartment, setting off an alarm.  Mice actually have more scent-receptor genes than canines, and don’t require constant human interaction.   A rat-down is accordingly a viable alternative to a pat-down.

A mouse-employing scanner manufactured by BioExplorers is less invasive than full body scanners, but requires maintenance of the mice as well as cleaning of their cages…

 

Categories: animal behavior, animals, science
Tags:

Comments: 2 Comments

Not Mickey’s Twisted Cousin…

February 13, 2011

– – I don’t know a lot about progressive and house dance music, but I know what I like, and Toronto-based electro sensation Deadmau5 (pronounced “dead mouse”) often performs in costume that includes a giant stylized mouse head , usually red in color and with strobing eyes, although I prefer the black variant, evil maus (shown above left).–Someday, perhaps more icons will be furry!

His album, For Lack of a Better Name (2009) is a personal fave, with “Moar Ghosts ‘n’ Stuff” playfully creepy and hauntingly memorable with a repeating funereal theme!  It’s great stuff for those of us who like Halloween year-’round!–Rock on!


Categories: anthropomorphic, Brilliant but twisted, cool things, furry spirits, music
Tags: ,

Comments: 2 Comments

GE’s “The Electric Cattle!”

February 11, 2011

– – In one of several GE commercials for their Ecomagination campaign, we are shown “cows in concert,” touting the company’s use of Biogas Technology using, err, waste from cows and landfills to generate energy.  These cows are the rock stars at a concert that they are powering, and we are shown their hooves working a bass drum pedal, hitting a cowbell (–what else?) with a drumstick, and working a mixing panel slider.

At the end of the clip, one of the bovines even takes to trying a little crowd surfing…very mooving!

Categories: animals, anthropomorphic, furry, television
Tags: ,

Comments: 3 Comments

Magnificent Mentos Spider!

February 9, 2011

– – Short of Peter Parker, you aren’t going to find an arachnid as breathtaking as the Mentos Rainbow pack spider! The commercial introduces us to a young couple sitting in their living room when suddenly the female goes ballistic, shrieking and recoiling on their couch.  The view shifts to the carpet, where we are shown…a spider!- –What is it with chicks and spiders, anyhow?!

Anyways, the guy responds by dutifully going to deal with the spider, extending a finger, possibly to crush the inoffensive creature.  The extended digit is all our eight-legged hero needs, however, to demonstrate his profound mastery of Jujutsu or perhaps Aikido, grasping the human’s finger and throwing him like a rag doll across the room no less than three times! A shelving unit and coffee table are splintered in the fracas!  The wrath of the spider is awesome, and the human is hopelessly outclassed!

In the closing images, we see the grounded human’s body dragged forcefully across the floor presumably by the amazing arachnid as the announcer intones, “It’s better to know what’s coming next!” It’s not revealed what fate awaits the human female, but I doubt things will go well for her, either…

…Bravo, I say!  Long may this arachnid martial arts master live and prosper!


Categories: animals, Brilliant but twisted, cool things, insects, Invertebrates, television
Tags: , ,

Comments: 2 Comments

« Older Entries