BEARSCARE

A recent surge of Burmese python attacks has both researchers and authorities concerned. Apparently the python, which was illegally introduced into Florida in the late ’80s by notorious snake dealer, Ferdinand “Fang” Mueller, has flourished and grown far more numerous than its food supply, which consists mostly of pigs, weasels and small monkeys. “We don’t find the bodies, because there are no remains. We do see, however, very well fed pythons. You know, there’s a big lump in the middle,” explains Harry Hinson, a snake expert employed by Biscayne County, FL. The 7-8 meter long snakes (21-24″) can weigh upwards of 400 kg and need to feed approximately twice per week, which is much more often than similarly sized snakes.

“The problem is,” continues Hinson, “their metabolisms actually adapt to their surroundings. Now we’ve got a lot of hogs in Biscayne County, so the snakes eat more of them. It’s a vicious cycle. And I do mean vicious.” The concern, stated Hinson, is that once the food supply is exhausted, the pythons will turn their beady eyes and forked tongues toward the human population. Several disappearances are expected to be the result of python attacks. “Yup, it’s already started. We’ve had half a dozen swamp people go missing in the last month alone,” remarked Hinson.

Fang Mueller is currently incarcerated in the Sarasota State Penitentiary. He generally declines requests from the press, but did release this statement last week:

“A lot of people are asking me if I regret my illegal activities. The answer is no. I regret getting caught. When buyers were plentiful, I was making a lot of money off those snakes. It was the American dream. And then they stopped buying them because they got all sentimental when the snakes started eating pets. What did you expect? So there I was with over 200 pythons. I had to do something, so I dumped them in the damn swamp. So shoot me! It’s what any last one of you would have done.”

Mueller was convicted of illegal snake smuggling in 2005 and, under Florida’s strict snake laws, was sentenced to 60 years in prison. He will be eligible for parole in 2018.

The Coconut Crab is the largest terrestrial arthropod in existence. On average, it weighs 4-5 kg and its legspan is around 70 cm, with the body itself 30-40 cm in diameter. Coconut crabs feed primarily on fruits and nuts, including the tropical coconut for which they are named, but will also eat lizards, birds, fish and the occasional small monkey.

It has been widely reported that these crabs, when hunting in a pack, can immobilize and consume a human. Although many arthropologists dispute this claim, tour guides generally discourage interaction with Coconut Crabs. “They will bite your foot off,” states Juan Calypso, a tour guide and naturalist operating in the Maldives island chain. “This one time, my friend, Jose, he wanted to catch one. The crab saw him coming and called his friends. The crabs charged Jose and nearly bit off all his fingers. If I hadn’t been there, they would have killed him. He spent two years in a hospital, but he’s OK now, thank God.”

A contrasting view, however, is held by Dr. Gilbert Humphrey, an adjunct professor of Arthropodal Studies at Yale University. “I have several pet Cokies,” remarked Humphrey, while puffing on a corncob pipe. “I let them crawl on my face or wherever. One time Rosco tried to crack my head like a coconut, but he didn’t get real far. I love the little guys.”

There is evidence sufficient for concern that coconut crabs are venomous. Trace amounts of neurotoxins have been detected in their nests. It is believed that the poison may be delivered through small tubes in the crabs’ retractable fangs and claws. Some males also feature a scorpion-like stinger thought to deliver venom.

Coconut Crabs rarely approach humans, but they do show a marked interest in human settlements. Crabs have often invaded trashcans, dumpsters and even restaurants, in search of both coconut and non-coconut food sources. The International Zoological Society (ZSI) has recommended 4-foot concrete barriers around any commercial food sources to prevent contamination from coconut crabs.

The Coconut Crab recently enjoyed a huge rise in notoriety after an individual successfully climbed Raul Castro’s personal yacht and attempted to sneak off with a coconut. Mr. Castro’s publicist provided little detail as to what ensued other than that the crab was unsuccessful and is “no longer a threat to la seguridad nacional Cubana“.

Recently, a purported video of American Vice President Joe Biden surfaced on the internet featuring Mr. Biden extolling the virtues of the Coconut Crab, but it was later determined to be a hoax. The Vice President has been seen, however, becoming visibly uneasy when asked about the animal.

The Iguana is the largest extant reptile on Earth. They are generally green, but sometimes brown, and can reach over 16 feet (5 meters) in length and over 800 lbs (363 kg).

For more, please visit our wiki: http://www.bearscare.org/wiki/index.php?title=Iguana.

NASA released a breakthrough astrobiological finding Thursday. NASA scientists have discovered animals made with arsenic rather than phosphorus, the fundamental building block of all known life. Arsenic, a metal, is structurally similar to phosphorus, a non-metal. Because of this, arsenic is deadly to phosphorus-based animals since their bodies incorrectly identify it as phosphorus and attempt to bond with it.

Found primarily on Rhea, a moon of Saturn, astrobiologists have identified over 900,000 species, ranging from small ant-like organisms to, “well, primates, if you will,” explains Shannon O’Keefe, NASA’s top astrobiology researcher and professor emeritus at Christopher Columbus University. O’Keefe went on to explain that high resolution photographs taken during fly-bys by NASA’s New Horizons deep space probe were the primary source for the new findings.

“We are planning a mission to attempt to interact or even communicate with the new species. Everything is moving very quickly. It’s very exciting,” O’Keefe went on, “We think the quickest way is to send a new space probe containing written and recorded information and also a radio transponder so that, if or when these new species have the intelligence to communicate, they will be able to do so.” O’Keefe would not comment on rumors that President Obama had ordered the 1970s era Pioneer design be used to save money, but she did answer, “Yes, we already spent the money and would like some return,” to the question of whether the space probe would include the Pioneer Plaque pictured below (NSFW version here).

Check back for updates on this rapidly developing story.

The Hybrid Death Snake (HDS) is not actually a snake. It certainly contains DNA from the deadliest snakes on the planet, but it’s much more.

In 1994, NATO officials approved a program to create a weapon unlike any other in history: a living weapon. Henri deFluche, an unofficial spokesman for the NATO Exotic Weapons Directorate, states, “we knew bombs were not enough. Bombs kill instantly rather than systematically. If you survive the blast, that’s it. The Hybrid Death Snake is different.”

Derived from DNA of the — sit down for this one — Cobra, Rattlesnake, Komodo Dragon, Great White Shark, Brown Bear, Hippopotamus, Rat, Human, Tortoise, Pit Viper and Lion, the HDS is the most dangerous animal in the world. It is believed that a computer chip embedded at birth in each individual’s brain allows NATO control, but there have been no published studies establishing the efficacy of such a device.

There are no photographs of the HDS publicly available, but an artist’s impression shows a scaly creature with six burly legs, cats’ eyes and a jaw, fitted with appropriate fangs, sufficient to eat even larger-than-average men. Keep an eye out.

On Tuesday, August 24, 2010, Colonel Harland Sanders emerged from a smoking space capsule which crashed into the Florida Everglades. Not knowing his true identity, emergency responders were baffled by his repeated, successful evasion of their attempts to bring him to a hospital for evaluation. After several hours, some of the paramedics apparently gave up; the rest went missing and their whereabouts are still uncertain.

The public became aware of the arrival of the fabled chicken entrepreneur when he appeared behind a podium later that afternoon in the Florida House of Delegates. Camera crews were already filming in anticipation for a debate concerning the future welfare of crocodiles. Sanders, who now stands over 11 feet (3.4 meters), was greeted with silence by the delegates who had already arrived; everyone was too scared to question how he had made it past security. One of the House staffers took the following picture with her Blackberry:

After breathing heavily for several minutes, he closed his eyes and relaxed his gigantic frame. Instantly, the image of a starving crocodile disappeared from the large projection screen on the wall behind the podium (above Sanders) and he apparently willed the following statement to appear:

HUMAN MEN AND WOMEN OF PLANET EARTH 1: I HAVE RETURNED AFTER INTERCEPTING RADIO TRANSMISSIONS ORIGINATING FROM YOUR FINE PLANET. I COME IN PEACE.

I HAVE SPENT THE LAST 30 YEARS TRAVELING THE UNIVERSE TO BRING MY FINGER LICKIN’ GOOD ORIGINAL RECIPE TO OTHER CIVILIZATIONS. I HAVE MET MANY POWERFUL LEADERS FROM OTHER EARTHS AND I WANT YOU TO KNOW THAT I TOLD THEM ALL ABOUT EARTH 1 AND THEY ARE OK WITH EVERYONE COEXISTING IN PEACE.

IN 1970, I USED MY FORTUNE TO INVEST IN A HYPER-WARP PROTON ENGINE TO FACILITATE INTERSTELLAR TRAVEL. UPON ITS COMPLETION IN 1978, I BEGAN PLANNING TO FABRICATE MY OWN DEATH; THE WORLD WAS NOT READY TO KNOW MY DREAM OF SPREADING PEACE AND FRIED CHICKEN ACROSS THE UNIVERSE.

THE TRANSMISSIONS I INTERCEPTED, AN APPARENT ADVERTISEMENT FOR MODERN KFC PRODUCTS, DESCRIBED MY CHICKEN AS “SO S-O-G-DOUBLE O-D GOOD”. WHILE I APPRECIATE THIS PRAISE, THE SAME TRANSMISSIONS CONFUSED SOME OTHER-WORDLY CULTURES WHOM I HAD TAUGHT ENGLISH. THE EMPEROR OF EARTH 7 THOUGHT THE LANGUAGE MEANT “SO-SO GOOD”, AS IF THE CHICKEN WAS JUST BARELY GOOD. I WAS IMMEDIATELY ASKED TO LEAVE AND PAINTED AS A HOAX. MY ADVICE TO ALL EARTH 1 LEADERS IS TO KEEP AN EYE ON EARTH 7. PLEASE, IN THE FUTURE, CHECK ALL BROADCASTS FOR AMBIGUITIES.

I WILL NOW CONTINUE MY MISSION. I PLAN TO RETURN IN 2052 TO COMMEMORATE THE OPENING OF THE FIRST KENTUCKY FRIED CHICKEN. UNTIL THEN, I WISH YOU PEACE, PROSPERITY AND HARMONY. THANK YOU.

Sanders then, as described by one onlooker, “glided out the door” and then ran, stopping only at a Pet Smart where he collected all the fish, small mammals, birds, but not reptiles, back to his capsule, which hovered briefly over the swamp and then accelerated in a direct path towards Ganymede, a moon of Jupiter.

Until today, below is the last know photograph of Colonel Sanders, taken several weeks before his faked death in 1980:

His survivors have not answered calls concerning a possible exhumation, but activists have dug in on both sides of the debate. Harland Sanders III issued the following press statement: “What would we even find? I know my grandfather, and that was him. Whoever or whatever is in that tomb is inconsequential.” An opposing opinion, however, offered by KFC fan Billy Marcus countered, “We’re visited by an 11 foot being from outer space who claims to be The Colonel. We need to investigate.” Both sides are assembling teams of lawyers and it will likely be months before any Earthly action is taken.

One question remains, however, and that is Sanders’ size. We contacted Fritz Leeuwenhoek, an associate director at the Large Hadron Collider, an underground particle accelerator located at the French-Swiss border. After considering our description of the events, he responded, through a translator, “My theory is that this was indeed Colonel Sanders. His increased stature could be easily explained as a relativistic side effect of traveling at speeds very close to, and sometimes faster, than the speed of light for an extended period of time. 30 years would be sufficient for a 40-90% elongation.”

This is all we have so far. There will no doubt be more on this in the near future.

Source: http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/08/24/colonel.sanders.returns.from.space/index.html?hpt=T2

Recently it has been brought to my attention that there’s a cat who can’t “meow” or hiss properly. This is disturbing for several reasons:

1. Cats meow constantly and it can be very annoying; a cat who doesn’t meow is probably plotting a far worse fate for its owner.
2. Cats hiss as a natural expression of disgust. A cat who does not hiss when it feels revulsion clearly has deceitful intentions.
3. Cats are generally unable to repress emotions consciously and so this specimen may present a unique opportunity to felinologists for the advancement of cat theory and felinology in general.

The cat, pictured below, is only able to make strange gurgling sounds, sometimes followed by high-pitched squeals, in situations during which other cats would certainly meow. Recently, confronting an estranged sibling, the individual, rather than exhibiting ordinary hissing behavior, reacted with sternutation followed by rapid inhalation.

Derek Jensen, a spokesman for the Coalition for the Advancement of Feline Research and Societal Integration (CAFRSI) , issued the following statement: “Occasionally, yes, we do encounter specimens deficient in meow and meow-related abilities. We have been studying this phenomenon since our institution’s inception in 2006. As of today, we have been unable to locate the missing gene, but we are confident that modern science and medicine will pave the way to future understanding of this disorder, and God willing, a cure for all those affected.”

I would like to personally offer my sympathy to all affected cats and wish the best of luck to those seeking a cure.

Three blizzards have hit my home in the last couple months, and I’m very concerned about a hazard to public safety that no news outlets have reported. The Yeti, or the more commonly known, anglicized version, The Abominable Snowman, is a rare hominid which inhabits the colder reaches of our planet. Although it is estimated that 95% of Yetis live in Greenland, populations are believed to exist as far south as British Columbia, in Canada, and as far north as the southernmost regions of Chile. Photographs and video of Yetis have never been verified since the organism has never been properly studied; it’s trivial to make an image of a human-like animal in the woods and so, historically, it’s been very difficult to isolate the fakes from real evidence.

The Yeti, unlike a conventional human, averages roughly 2 meters (6.6 feet) in height and roughly 150 kg (330 lbs) in mass. Yetis are primarily carnivorous, though they rely on tree bark for fiber to facilitate digestion an primitive algae growth on rocks for essential vitamins and minerals. Their primary prey is cloven hoofed animals, including Roe Deer and the common swine. Yetis, on average, require 2-3 kg of meat per day to survive; studies concerning their vegetarian needs have been inadequate and lacking, and the scientific community has yet to reach any consensus regarding such dietary requirements.

Documented human interactions with Yetis are nearly non-existent. Most encounters exist in folk-lore and not verifiable literature. It is generally understood throughout the community that the lack of evidence reflects poorly on the reliability of the collectors rather than the scientists; individuals who are in position to interact with Yetis rarely possess the presence of mind to accurately document these encounters. And so the Yeti, in any official sense, remains a mystery. I urge all East Coast residents to keep their eyes open for our majestic, furry cousins; we may never understand aliens, but at least Yetis are within our grasp.

On Thursday, February 4th, 2010, a giant panda was removed by the People’s Republic of China from the National Zoo in Washington, DC. The panda, named Tai Shan, by popular vote, was the first of the species to be born on America soil and is considered by many to have citizen status. The PRC laid claim on Tai Shan, however, arguing primarily that, since Tai Shan’s parents where in Washington on loan, he inherited Chinese ownership.

“Look, we really didn’t want to rock the boat,” commented Raul Jimenez, an unofficial White House spokesman. He continued, “you bet they were up late evaluating options. Apparently some very high ranking officials used strong, sometimes vulgar, language in expressing their disapproval over the deal.” Although Mr. Jimenez would not comment as to whether President Obama or his family were involved in the discussions, he did quote the president as stating “all options are still on the table, people, including complete, resolute and absolute refusal to turn over Tai Shan,” at around 8 PM Wednesday night.

Tai Shan will be missed. An unworthy tribute follows:

Goodbye, Tai Shan; we will miss you. Spread the American Dream in your new home.

When I go out on my expeditions into the harshest environments (The Badlands, Antarctica, the Gobi, etc.), I travel light. But I also travel strong. The Cold Steel SRK is a knife which can do the following: cut through a car hood, serve as a ladder, open a can of peaches, DESTROY a parachute, stab right through body armor and into somebody, cut open boots, and even cut a fire hose. Don’t believe me? Look at this video, then do yourself a favor and buy one.