– – Pennsylvania’s two week general deer hunting season opens this Monday, November 28th, and it is estimated that 750,000 hunters will be out on opening day. Hunters “harvested” 316,000 deer last year, down from the record of more than 500,000 taken in 2002…schools actually close for this unofficial holiday, tacking it on to students’ Thanksgiving holiday weekend…well, it ain’t no holiday for the deer!
…fortunately, however, there will be Rambuck!
– – It’s best not to look to the long-running Super Mario Bros. video game series for biological authenticity, or you may stomp on a turtle’s head and anticipate seeing a coin materialize out of its behind. I confess to having played Mario Bros. in my day, and I also confess to liking the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, and agreeing with many of their positions. There are times, though, when PETA can become a bit, err, overdone.
The point of being over the top may have been reached in PETA’s opposition to the Tanooki suit as worn by the character of heroic plumber Mario in Super Mario 3D Land. Now an actual tanuki is an animal native to Japan that looks like a raccoon but is more closely related to a dog, and by wearing a “Tanooki” suit, PETA feels that Mario is sending the message that it’s OK to wear fur. While at points in the video game Mario dons a raccoon-ish looking “Tanooki” suit that enables him to float in the air and swat bad guys with his tail, he is never shown slaughtering an animal to get the suit; rather, Mario acquires the suit magically from hovering squares in the air.
In protest irregardless, PETA has created its own game called “Super Tanooki Skin 2D” in which a skinless Tanooki chases a sinister-looking Mario who is in a fur suit dripping with blood and adorned with a raccoon-like head.
Nintendo’s response to PETA’s claims has been that Mario often takes the appearance of certain animals and objects in his games, with such things having included a frog, a penguin, a balloon, and even a metallic version of himself. The whimsical transformations are intended to give Mario different abilities and to make the games fun to play, with no statement intended beyond the games themselves…
– – You might not want a hippopotamus for Christmas, regardless of what the irritating novelty song tells you. Consider the case of South African farmer Marius Els who adopted at five months of age a male hippo rescued as a calf during a flood, and added him to his collection of 20 different exotic animals including giraffe and rhino that he kept on his farm. Naming the hippo Humphrey, the former army major built a bond with the animal, considered him harmless, and was videotaped riding him. Els was repeatedly warned that the hippo was still a wild animal and had to be treated with caution; incidents occurred where the hippo was blamed for killing calves and also broke out of his enclosure, chasing golfers at a nearby club.
The mutilated body of Marius Els was recently found in a river running through his property after the man was bitten several times by the hippo and then dragged underwater. Hippos, you see, are highly territorial, and are considered one of the world’s most dangerous animals, commonly attacking humans with no apparent provocation, and usually using their enormous canine teeth to gouge their victims.
The hippopotamus can weigh up to three tons, and travel at speeds of up to 30 mph…
– – As most of you are probably aware, kids have an almost endless fascination with bodily functions, so I suppose it was almost inevitable that a game was developed that involved a plastic dog and, err, bodily function number two.- – I swear that I am not making this up! Contestants feed the dog plasticene, work a pump, the plasticene is processed through the plastic dog, exits the appropriate end with flatulent sounds, and the player who winds up with the most doggie doo’s wins the game!- -Won’t that be a great preparation for adult life?- -Should be a real winner at church functions and below the old Xmas tree this year!
The concept for the game has been in existence for about 15 years, although rudimentary standards of taste and questions of corporate image kept it from being further developed and marketed in the U.S. until recently. Europe, however, knew how to appreciate a toy dog with excremental functions, and the game has been a runaway hit there. Now you too can buy Doggie Doo in this country, and the game featuring a poopy dachshund is poised to be an American hit, available at major retailers this year…
– – Since childhood, you’ve probably heard the rhyme, “eenie meenie minie moe, /catch a tiger by the toe,/ if he hollers, let him go,/ etc.- -Well, in this commercial we see that rhyme visualized when a mild-mannered office worker is using the eenie meenie method to determine which of the Mentos gum flavors to pick.
Suddenly, a tiger pops up on cue with his toe caught in a trap! The realistic tiger growls menacingly at the office nerd before asking engagingly, “Do I really need to holler?” Both calm yet afraid, the guy shakes his head no, and likewise verbalizes in the negative…and what else could he say?! In the background, another worker may be seen getting the h*** out.–Well done, Mentos!- –Don’t play “Hold That Tiger!”
– – It’s Halloween, Foxsylvanians, that most special day of the year to me, and I would be much amiss if I didn’t wish each and every one of my valued readers a frightful and delightful day! Enjoy the day, and Get your roar on!
– – “Grimm…what a lovely name!,“ once remarked Morticia Addams. In this new NBC series, a Grimm is a hunter of mythological creatures which only the hunters and their kind can perceive under the guise of normality as such beings walk among us. Echoing such past shows as The X-Files, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Angel, Grimm has been described as “one part police procedural drama and one part supernatural slug fest,” drawing story lines and characters from the sizable corpus of Grimm’s fairy tales, many of which are dark delights.
In the season premier, we meet a reformed Big Bad Wolf, who is not big, no longer bad, does Pilates, and attends church. There are others of his werewolf kind, but they don’t hang out much; bad things happen, ‘ya see, when they get into packs. Some werewolves continue to exist who still do bad things like kill and abduct, but even the one perp the story concerns is a mixed bag who wears nice sweaters, lives in a beautiful mountain house, makes pies, works for the government postal service(–what else?), and keeps a young girl captive in his basement. –But hey, as Clint Eastwood’s character emoted in Tightrope, “There’s a darkness inside us all.”
This isn’t The X-Files, but I enjoyed the opener, and hope for some Grimm times ahead. Of furry interest is the reformed werewolf, who apparently in going to be a continuing character in the series, as is the toothy female pictured…
– – Just days after a private owner of exotic pets in Ohio set dozens free this week and then committed suicide, Ohio Governor John Kasich signed an executive order pushing for a moratorium on exotic animal auctions and a crackdown on unlicensed auctions in the state.
Animal activists have complained that Ohio has some of the nation’s laxest regulations on exotic pets. A Dayton, Ohio based group that wants to end private ownership of wild animals says that it knows of at least 20 farms that are comparable to the one in Zanesville from which 56 exotic animals were released with authorities subsequently slaying 49 of them, including 18 rare Bengal tigers…one percent of the world’s Bengal tiger population.
– – Neither in their native habitat nor near Oz, dozens of wild and exotic animals kept in private ownership escaped from a farm near Zanesville, Ohio Tuesday night when an animal farm owner described as a “collector” released 56 animals from their cages and then killed himself. Of the released animals which included lions, tigers, bears, mountain lions, wolves, and a baboon, 49 were killed by local authorities who deemed such necessary to ensure the public safety. Six animals were captured alive while at least a baboon remained unaccounted for.
Counted among the slain animals were 18 tigers, nine male and eight female lions, six black bears, three mountain lions, two grizzly bears, two wolves, and a baboon. The owner/operator of the wildlife farm had been previously convicted of multiple firearms and animal regulations violations, including cruelty to animals.
This horrendous and unnecessary tragedy underscores the need for strict and nationally standardized regulations governing the sale and ownership of exotic animals; Ohio is one of the states that currently has no such laws…
– – I saw some Thing this weekend that was both some Thing old and some Thing new…namely, the prequel to the 1982 John Carpenter classic film of the same name. The film was basically true to the mood and feeling of Carpenter’s previous epic, and has been criticized for not striking its own identity. Heavy on atmospherics and paranoia, the new Thing is a dark movie…as well it should be. The grandfather of the series, The Thing From Another World (1951), was a classic film way ahead of its time, drawing in turn from the 1938 John W. Campbell novella, Who Goes There?
While the alien monster in John Carpenter’s film went out of its way to hide its identity and avoid detection, this prequel alien is much more visible, looking like a Lovecraft-inspired horror of claws, jaws, and flailing tentacles. When we see the full-bodied creature scrabbling about, it appears part cephalopod and part crustacean, morphing as it assimilates and mimics the cellular structure of its victims and then hiding within them until the time for its next power play.
We are taken inside the massive starcraft of the alien when the few survivors of the decimated Antarctic Norwegian research station decide to limit the contagion by tracking the creature home, and in the closing scenes of the movie the filmmakers provide seamless transition scenes to where the Carpenter film begins. While some of the prequel’s characters are monster kibble, Mary Elizabeth Winstead turns in a strong performance as paleontologist Kate Lloyd, a woman who like Sigourney Weaver’s Ellen Ripley knows her way around a flamethrower…
FOXSYLVANIA 
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