French village menaced by crocodile

The sleepy French village of Xertigny is on high alert following multiple sightings of a crocodile, Retuers reports.

Campaigning local newspaper L’Est Republicain has set up a webcam to record instances of the terrifying reptile crusing the local waterways, but has yet to capture anything more threatening than a water vole.

In the style of Jurassique Parque, a chicken has been tethered to a nerby fence in an effort to tempt the scaly monster from its lair, but the bird has so far eluded its jaws. Frustrated authorities are said to be considering draining the pool in a quest for answers.

“I think it’s carp,” said local angler Bruno Aime, to nods from the assembled reporters, moments before they checked their typing.

“[My amateurish homemade sonar] equipment doesn’t let you see the difference between a pike of a metre long and a caiman of 1.50 metres,” Aime shrugged, as he gnawed on a brie-stuffed baguette.

Laughable tales of crocodilians patrolling the sewers of major urban centres were popular in the 20th century, yet may be grounded in fact. Indeed, if Khmer artists ever had a sense of perspective or scale, such stories might be more commonplace than we had dared to fear.

Romantic bear goes for chocolates and champagne

A lovesick bear burgled a California home in search of chocolates and champagne, California broadcaster KTVU reports.

Last Saturday, San Bernadino deputies attended a San Antonio Heights home in response to a breaking and entering call. The stunned residents had found a bear raiding their fridge, and immediately dialed the emergency services.

Sergeant Tom Alsky told KTVU the sweet-toothed intruder had eschewed the healthy choice, pushing aside vegetables in a single-minded search for the chocs. The ursine romatic had also attempted to open a bottle of champagne, apparently without success.

At press time, local florists could not recall any telephone orders placed by gruff-voiced customers.

Mashed-up wallabies create crop circles

The mystery of the crop circles that have recently appeared in Australian poppy fields has finally been resolved, the BBC reports.

Hungry wallabies in search of a meal have burgled fields of opium poppy, scoffed a few heads, and hopped around in circles “as high as a kite”, creating the arable formations beloved of stoners and New Age mystics the world over.

Speaking to a parliamentary hearing on poppy crop security, Tasmania’s attourney general Laura Giddings said: “We have a problem with wallabies entering poppy fields, getting as high as a kite and going around in circles. Then they crash. We see crop circles in the poppy industry from wallabies that are high.”

Australia supplies half of the world’s legally-grown opium poppies, essential for the manufacture of morphine and methadone, used for pain relief and cleaning up smackheads respectively.

The cycle (or circle) of addiction is not confined to Australia’s indigenous marsupial population, according to Tasmanian Alkaloids spokesman Rick Rockliff: “There have been many stories about sheep that have eaten some of the poppies after harvesting, and they all walk around in circles.”

The antipodean junkie mammals join a proud line of non-human hedonists. New Scientist gleefully reports stories of psychedelic elephants, pissed-up Malaysian tree shrews and ganja-crazed chimpanzees.

Readers interested in the usual source of crop-circles, i.e. bored cider guzzlers from Hampshire, are directed to this handy resource.

TVM Tim, who is alive to such stories.

9/11 hero dog cloned

A dog which retrieved survivors from the wreckage of the World Trade Centre has been successfully cloned, Agence France Press reports.

BioArts International last year held a contest to determine the world’s most “cloneworthy” dog, in what they called the “Golden Clone Giveaway”. Genetic immortality was awarded to Trakr, the valorous Alsatian responsible for discovering the last human survivor of the terrorist attack on New York, September 11 2001.

Lou Hawthorne, Chief Executive of BioArts, said: “We received many very touching submissions to our contest, each describing some truly amazing dogs, but Trakr’s story blew us away.”

Five healthy German Shepherd puppies have been cloned from the prestigious pooch’s DNA, following the assitance of South Korea’s SooAm Biotech Research Foundation.

Trakr's offspring, with equally preposterous names: Trustt (sic), Valor, Prodigy, Solace and Deja Vu

“Trakr was an extraordinary search and rescue dog. His work at Ground Zero was the culmination of his career,” said retired RCMP dog handler James Symington, Trakr’s human partner.

It is hoped the puppies, dubbed Trustt, Valor, Prodigy, Solace and Deja Vu (pictured), will follow in the pawprints of their genetic forbear and embark (haha) on a career of rescue work.

“If they have the same attributes Trakr did, then hopefully they’ll develop into world class search and rescue dogs,” said Symington, as the assembled hacks dabbed their eyes with their handkerchieves.

In addition to the emotional potency of cloning a dead 9/11 hero, Trakr’s descendants somewhat vindicate the work of Hwang Woo-Suk, the South Korean scientist recently disgraced for falsifying his results. His five-for-the-price of-one attitude to American heroes is sure to go a long way towards his academic rehabilitation.

German fox steals over 100 shoes

A fox in Germany has been found in possession of over 100 stolen shoes, Reuters reports.

The cache was discovered in woods near the town of Föhren, in Rheinland Pfalz, by forestry workers.

The vulpine Imelda Marcos had apparently half-inched the shoes from local residents under the cover of darkness.

“There was everything from ladies’ shoes to trainers,” said an unnamed police spokesman. “We’ve found between 110 and 120 so far. It seems a vixen stole them for her cubs to play with.”

Local residents expressed delight at being reunited with their lost footwear, raising further questions about the provision of shoe leather in western Germany.

Food caching strategies are well known among foxes. The poultryman’s lament, frequently heard in anti-bloodsports circles, usually takes the following form: “You wouldn’t be anti-hunt if you’d ever seen what a fox can do in a henhouse.”

Foxes routinely kill more than they can eat: an observation that, to lay observers, implies uncontrollable bloodlust in the animal. However, discovery of unconsumed prey usually indicates that a predator was disturbed before it could carry off all its kills, intended for burial as insurance against future shortages.

Whether the German fox mistook the stolen trotter cases for food, or simply had to find the perfect pair of Jimmy Choos to match her coat, remains to be learned.

Berlin chimp chomps captor’s finger

Quite literally biting the hand that feeds him, a chimpanzee at Berlin’s Zoo severed his captor’s finger, Reuters reports.

Pedro, a 28 year-old chimpanzee, attacked 51 year-old zoo director Bernhard Blaszkiewitz while he showed an unnamed companion around his menagerie. Offering the alpha chimp a snack of shelled walnuts, Blaszkiewitz instead found his index finger bitten off at the knuckle.

“Pedro is the boss of the group so he has to demonstrate a certain dominance in it to prove himself,” zoo spokesman and ape apologist Andre Schuele said.

“Under normal circumstances, a chimp would never have the chance to reach a keeper or our director,” Schuele continued, eyeing the machine gun nests and carefully-planted minefields with evident satisfaction.

While surgeons battled to reattach Blaszkiewitz’s finger, Pedro was assured that no reprisals would follow his insurgency.

Blunkett attacked by cow

These days, everyone and his dog has an opinion on MP’s expenses, including those who only ever took The Telegraph for the cricket and crossword. But now, even the livestock appear to have taken a position.

Former Home Secretary David Blunkett has been attacked by a cow, BBC News reports.

The Honourable Member for Sheffield Brightside was enjoying a stroll through the Derbyshire countryside in celebration of his 62nd birthday when the ruminant took a dislike to his guide dog, Sadie. Valiantly protecting his canine companion, Blunkett fell and was trampled.

The former Home Secretary spoke to the media through gritted teeth, alive to his role as a living metaphor for the party. “I have a broken rib and am bruised all over but am still walking,” he told BBC Five Live.

When quizzed for best practice, Alison Pratt, rent-a-quote spokesperson for the National Farmers’ Union, cast the following pearls of wisdom before the attendant swine:

“The best thing to do is to let the dog off the lead so it can run away because obviously a dog can run faster than you,” she said.

“The next thing to do is to get quite quickly to the edge of the field, collect the dog and leave,” glossing somewhat conveniently over the fact that Sadie is Blunkett’s guide dog.

Blunkett added somewhat ruefully: “I know the public are furious with politicians, but I didn’t realise the anger has spread to Britain’s cow population.”

Sadie, although unavailable for comment, was unharmed.

Feral child discovered in Siberia

A feral child has been discovered in rural Russia, Reuters reports.

The five year old girl, whose development is more akin to a two-year-old, was found by Russian police in the Siberian city of Chita. Unable to speak a human language, she had taken on the vernacular of her adoptive canine parents.

Natascha, the feral child discovered in Chita, Siberia.

“For five years, the girl was ‘brought up’ by several dogs and cats and had never been outside,” a police statement said. “When carers leave the room, [she] jumps at the door and barks.”

“Natasha” has been transferred to an orphanage while her (human) mother is questioned by police. The whereabouts of her biological father is not known.

Everything you wanted to know about human children raised by animals, including the unique case of the ostrich boy, is available at feralchildren.com.

Orangutan escapes Australian zoo, gives self up

Visitors to Adelaide Zoo were evacuated after a Sumatran orangutan mounted a successful escape bid, the Associated Press reports.

The 137-lb female short-circuited an electric fence by jamming a stick into its power supply, before fashioning a makeshift ladder and scaling the walls of her enclosure.

Karta the orang utan. You may sleep safe at night.

Karta, 27, remained atop the fence for half an hour before deciding to return to captivity.

“I think when she actually got out and realized … she shouldn’t be there, so then she’s actually hung onto the wall and dropped back into the exhibit,” zoo curator Peter Whitehead told reporters.

The zoo was evacuated as a precautionary measure, and vets armed with tranquilizer guns stood by in case things turned nasty.

Zoos South Australia’s Conservation Psychologist Dr Carla Litchfield told ABC’s PM programme that the pongid was probably searching for her mate Pusung, who died last month from a respiratory infection.

“It’s very possible she was looking for Pusung because to her he’s missing and perhaps he’s around here somewhere. That’s possibly what was going through her head but of course we can’t see into their heads and we can’t ask them to tell us,” Dr Lichfield said.

NZ parrot steals passport

A British holidaymaker had his passport stolen by a kea, stuff.co.nz reports.

The Briton was awaiting delivery of his passport in Milford Sound, in Fiordland National Park, when the bird struck. A bus driver was retrieving luggage from a storage locker when the kea snuck in and pinched a brightly-coloured courier bag. The driver was unable to stop the feathered highwayman, who immediately flew off into the surrounding trees.

The Scotsman, who did not want to be identified (and now, of course, cannot), said: “My passport is somewhere out there in Fiordland. The kea’s probably using it for fraudulent claims or something. I’ll never look at a kea in the same way.”

A second replacement passport could take up to six weeks to reach South Island, giving the kea ample opportunity to travel in the meantime.