As much fun as it could be to have a pet skunk or raccoon, I always wonder just how far I could trust them. I’m not convinced the “wild” ever completely leaves a pet taken from the wild. I always shake my head in bewilderment at the guy on TV who befriended and frolics with a clan of hyenas and the guy who has a pet polar bear and romps with it like one would a puppy. To me, both those guys are just one bad night’s sleep away from being a snack.
At a predator calling expo years ago we found a taxidermist there with a really good display of his work. Front and center in his display was a taxidermied skunk. The skunk was rigged so the guy could lift its tail with a remote control he held under the table out of sight. He’d wait until a group was gathered around the skunk, naturally enamored with it as one would imagine, then he’d suddenly lift its tail and watch the crowd scatter. He later told us about a taxidermist friend who had a skunk mounted over a radio controlled car frame. At shows he would keep the skunk under the table out of sight, then when a crowd would gather around his display, he’d suddenly run it out through the crowd and watch people head for the exits.
A friend of mine who has taken me rattlesnake hunting a few times tells a funny story about a coyote getting into a store. He lives near Osborne KS and delivers mail there. One day while on his mail route he got wind that a coyote had gotten into the store in town and barricaded itself under some shelves near the back. He swung by the store and sure enough, there was a coyote cowering under some racks and growling at anyone who got too close. Solutions to the problem seemed scarce, so he went to his truck and retrieved his ever-present snake stick; it’s a longer, heavier-duty version of one of those “grippers” used by people in wheelchairs to pick up items from the floor. He walked to the back of the store, grabbed the coyote by a back leg with the snake stick and literally dragged it up the isle and out the front door.
Every year, usually near or during deer hunting season there are reports of deer finding their way into towns across the country. They often end up wondering through the door into a business of some sort and causing a ruckus. Sometimes they crash through a door or window to get in and are cut and bleeding badly enough they have to be put down. Sometimes they simply walk through an open front door and then find their own way out after terrorizing the place. Sometimes they have to be tranquilized, lassoed or subdued in some other way and forcefully removed.
I suppose by now you’re wondering just where the heck I’m going with all this, so I’ll tell you. A little tale in Tuesday’s Hutchinson News caught my eye and it’s too good not to retell. It seems that Monday in the eastern German city of Dresden, a loose moose evaded capture for some time before walking through the front door and getting stuck terribly close to the canteen inside the building housing German industrial giant Siemens Corp. A Dresden police spokesman said officers and wildlife control spent six hours trying to shoo the moose into a container, but eventually had to resort to tranquilizing the young bull when it wouldn’t follow orders. The spokesman said the moose, likely to have come from neighboring Poland, will be released back into the wild.
Six hours trying to shoo a moose into a crate before they considered tranquilizing the thing, really? And no wonder it wouldn’t follow orders; you can’t expect a polish moose to understand German. Anyway, there are so many jokes than can be made about this story, but I’d better just shut up before I put my foot into my mouth…again. Continue to Explore Kansas Outdoors, even if you live in Poland!
Steve can be contacted by email at [email protected]
