All things bright & beautiful

Not sure whether Wired does these roundups of the week’s weirdest animal encounters on a, you know, weekly basis. If they do, I’m not sure why I’ve not come across them before this, but I’m totally glad I’ve found this one. Because…I just know that you cannot make this stuff up.

I mean—a “free-ranging monkey” (is that like free-range chickens?) “terrorizing” the suburbs of Marseille? Because it fell in with a bad lot of human monkeys who (wait for it) fed it the simian equivalent of junk food, chocolates. Le petit singe had to be Tased and is presumably currently in detox, with rehab to follow. Then: the appearances on the talk-show circuit.

New Jersey looms large in this weird in the wild. Well, as you’d expect, I suppose, because…New Jersey. Pink geese, rampaging rams; you gotta love it. Plus, the woman who will not believe the obvious explanation for her unicorn sighting goes a long way to explain the outcome of last month’s elections.

Kudos to the Amherst students who look upon their visiting moose as an opportunity to rethink their school mascot. I hope they give the new representative the obvious name of Bullwinkle. They could then take on a new persona in keeping with that celebrity’s own academic institution.

As for the orangutans at the Paignton Zoo in England: if I opened a Christmas package only to find Brussels sprouts, I’d wrap myself in burlap, too.