Drunk Moose on the Loose! Justice is Swift and Final for Drunken Toddler-Biting Beast

If anyone, Ben Stein for instance, needs proof that Darwin offered more than just creative fuel for the Nazis (a key point in the ironically-titled film featuring one-joke Ferris Bueller prof [and former Nixon lackey] Stein: “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed”), one need look no further than at how our animal friends seem to enjoy fermented beverages just as much as your second-cousin Murray the Mooch (who incidentally also looks like a stork, thus further strengthening the point).

We did not leave out the wild kingdom (Mutual of Omaha version or otherwise) in our compendium of drunken exploits, “The Man Who Scared a Shark to Death: And Other True Tales of Drunken Debauchery.” Indeed, two chapters are devoted to it – “Man Bites Dog and Dog Bites Back,” (the animals were sober in most of these stories, but the humans – like the guy who broke into a zoo late at night so his buddies could watch him wrestle a bear – were not) and “Crapulent Critters,” which features, among others, a raging drunken chimpanzee, an alcoholic and foul-tempered parrot, and ripped royal corgis. Also in that chapter is a small “Dishonorable Mention” entry about elk (the kind of elk that in North America we would refer to as moose) hopped up on fermented apples and terrorizing a senior’s center.

When you’ve been covering drunks in the news for as long as we have, certain patterns begin to emerge: at Christmas time, drunks in Santa suits will gather en masse and start a riot, and, it’s just as certain, that Swedish moose will never know when it’s time to push away from the bar and go home once they start gorging on fermented apples. The connection between moose and alcoholism presumably explains why the worst themed bars you can possibly set foot in that aren't ersatz Irish places like Mickey Mcfinnigan's Macgregor Pub & Grill are those with “Moose” in their names -- “The Loose Moose” etc. (though we're sure that the place is a first-rate establishment, or at least the best you can hope for so far removed from civilization.)

In the latest case of a drunken moose terrorizing a Swede, a three-year-old girl was playing in a sandpit when a moose, intoxicated on fermented apples, sauntered by and bit her on the arm. Reports were vague as to whether the child had been drinking at the time or had done anything to provoke the beast. Regardless though, any such actions on the tot's part would have to be balanced with the 500-800 pound weight advantage that the moose had on its side. The girl let out the kind of piercing shriek that one images one would (even in one’s 30s) when bit by a giant drunken animal, her mother came rushing to her aid and the moose made a drunken zigzag for higher ground.

Unfortunately for the moose, escaping backwoods justice would not be so easy. A renegade posse of hunters, bent on vigilante justice, waited for him at the site of the fermented apples. When he returned for another intoxicating gobble, the hunters shot his ass. Wildlife officials said it was extremely rare for a moose to actually bite a person, though it would be far more common for a moose to kick to death or trample somebody, basically like a bunch of bikers at a social function. The summary execution then seems understandable given that other unattended Swedish children might have met such a fate.

And since we have a yearly limit of stories about misbehaving animals drunk on fermented fruit -- we keep them to one such story per year (unless by eating the fermented apples the animal somehow gains the ability to speak, in which case we'll blog about little else for a long while) -- here is a scene from the documentary "Animals are Beautiful People" of more than one species getting blasted on the stuff (and yes, as suspected, giraffes do make for dignified-looking drunks).

Crocodile Tears in your Beer: Aussie barflies get visit from baby croc

Those of us who grew up watching professional wrestling had, at one point or another, to come to terms with the fact that the stereotypes represented in the rasslin’ ring were a few metal folding-chair head-shots apart from reality. So when the wrestling world told us that Australia was comprised of a mix of people that were halfway between Outback Jack – a “Let’s capitalize on Crocodile Dundee’s popularity” 80s wrestler who lost more matches than he was in – and the Bushwackers, two toothless stereotypes, who marched around the ring, swinging their arms above their heads (see below -- it's a bit like power-walking, but with a lot more arm-swinging and cretinous head bobbing) in a fashion not encountered since one of us observed it replicated by a very drunk English football fan on the streets of Amsterdam.

(The Bushwackers, it should be noted for the sake of people who would lose sleep tonight if this correction were not made, were actually from New Zealand. The best way to upset a Kiwi? Tell them, “I love New Zealand. They filmed the Lord of the Rings movies there. It really is the most scenic part of Australia.” Australia is to New Zealand as the United States is to Canada and such jibes do not go down well as an American telling a Canadian in a foreign land, “Ah, what a relief to hear an American accent.”)

But surely this was all stuff and nonsense and actual life in Australia does not bear any actual resemblance to a bunch of people living out in the bush and making lasting friendships with the koala bears? Well, actually, no, the Bushwackers or their like might actually have been holding fort in the bar where the following took place.

Drinkers were enjoying an afternoon’s tipple at the Noonamah Tavern, located 25 miles (40 km) from the Northern Territory capital of Darwin, basically a point on the map marked with the label “Middle of Nowhere.”, when a baby salt-water crocodile, or “salty” in the local parlance, walked into a bar. No it wasn’t accompanied by a nun and a circus dwarf. Rather than being frightened by the site of this creature, that likes to when it’s full grown sink its chompers into anything from water buffaloes to humans, the drinkers taped its jaws shut and brought it inside for a photos.

The woman who tends bar said that having the wild kingdom stroll in for a jar of the good stuff wasn’t an unusual occurrence. “We've had a lot of horses pop up. We've had cane toads, which are yukky," she said. "We have had a big buffalo come in, wander around. There's a photo of him with a beer."

Since the creature is at home in saltwater and would have had to travel pretty far to reach the pub from such a habitat, the bartender reckons it was either dropped off there accidentally by a fisherman or as a practical joke. Regardless, the carousing croc escaped his brush with bush-country pub life and is now among his fellows at a local crocodile farm. (Full story here). (For more on crocs and the boozers who love them, check out this story from our archives).

Bear Stern: Ursa Major Mauls Mashed Mom and Have A Shark Sandwich on Us: The Shark Guys Mark 100 Blog Entries!

When a tiger nearly made an “uno” out of the duo Siegfried & Roy, the effete conjurer Siegfried did not heed this clear warning that wild animals do not belong in the world of men in sequined jumpsuits, but rather insisted that the tiger that mauled his sidekick was "protecting rather than attacking him".

A similarly baffling disconnect from reality guided the life of the sad lunatic Timothy Treadwell, subject of Werner Herzog’s documentary “Grizzly Man”, who took Winnie The Pooh as cinema verite and decided to spend his summers among grizzly bears. He didn’t survive his final trip, because, having been lulled into a false sense of security by previous trips when bears had not packed their lunchboxes with his innards, he didn’t bring along the arsenal that we would assume mandatory for such a camp-out: a portable drum of bear spray, sticks of dynamite to light and throw behind you when a bear doesn’t buy your “play dead” routine, a tank etc.

What makes these stories truly puzzling is that they cannot be blamed squarely on the drink – Siegfried and Roy have been performing for decades and heck even Charles Bukowski was known to sober up from time to time. Treadwell, although a recovering alcoholic (who might well still be alive today if he had just kept on boozing) at the time of his death, would have had to have had Budweiser air-dropped in to reach him at his remote Alaskan camps.

In our book, the first-ever published compendium of blue-ribbon drunk stories taken from newspapers around the world “The Man Who Scared a Shark to Death and Other True Tales of Drunken Debauchery, we covered feats that were just as gallingly dangerous as the above, but at least those featured in the chapter “Man Bites Dog and Dog Bites Back” were plastered at the time.

One of the stories in that chapter, “Bear-ly Legal”, chronicles the exploits of a drunken Ukrainian man who thought himself so strong that no human could best him, and decided to seek out suitable competition in the bear cage of his local zoo – only alert zookeepers kept him from a Treadwell-ian-like fate.

You can imagine our surprise then when we came across an international news item involving yet another drunk mauled by a bear in the Ukraine. The woman reportedly wandered into the bear enclosure at a local farm, an intrusion which upset one of its occupants – the kind of upset that animals of that species tend to externalize by mauling to death the intruder. The next time you feel bad for opening a door on two lovers at a party thinking it’s the bathroom, just think of how much it might have been.

Along with making sure that our record of chronicling ursine-related drunk stories remains in tact, we also have an announcement to make: this is our 100th blog! It’s been quite the ride, with quite the number of DUI convictions along the way. While not as remarkable an accomplishment as, say, having lived 100 years and being first on your block to get a letter shuffled out by the lowly aid of a high-ranking government official (click here for an example of how to do it up right should you live to 100), we did want to mention it and thank everyone who has stopped by and had a round with us. We're enjoying the party and are glad to have made the acquaintance of a few new drinking buddies to add to our ever-expanding circle, among them the good folks at CollegeDrinker.com where we regularly contribute Shark material.

We'll continue to belly up to the bar three times a week to bring you the best drunk stories, drinking trends and all matter of alcohol-soaked news.

Salut!

The Shark Guys

Man Streaking at Horse Race: And it's 'Drunk Idiot' by a nose!

As we noted in 'The Shark Book', horses once served man as a primary mode of transport and then were thanked for their years of service with new posts in society as fodder for glue and rendering plants and as a key ingredient in the nation's dog food.

Another popular use for horses has been to gather them at tracks, put lilliputian men atop them and force them to race one another while the audience bring ruination upon themselves through gambling, softening the blow of every lost dollar with a fortifying drink.

Occasionally, this spectacle of soaking up hooch like a dish rag, cursing and haggling with hookers is undertaken with pretension, as is the case with the running of the Royal Ascot. There, in '94 as we chronicled in the book, a drunk galoot, aiming to get a closer look at the 'gorgeous' (source newspaper's quotation marks) women in the Royal Enclosure, nearly got trampled to death in front of Her Majesty, the Queen Mother and the Duke of Edinburgh.

This recent example from NSW, Australia, though less benign (unless you count all the angry punters willing to put this man's life in danger for having nullified the race results) involved a man celebrating a stag party with his closest mates, who decided to strip down and offer up a photo finish [seen here]

Hair of the Dog: Drunk pooch stumbles into vet's office

Been drinking a little too much? Visit our womens alcohol rehab center and enter womens drug rehab at our womens drug treatment center today. You'll get over your addiciton in no time!



Thus far, the beastly behavior we’ve chronicled here has been solely that of the human variety. However, in The Shark Book we actually devoted an entire chapter, ‘Crapulent Critters’ to our cousins lower down on the food chain, who took to the booze with a particularly anthropomorphic vigor.

From an unscrupulous Royal footman who got the Queen’s Royal corgis hopped up on gin and whiskey (one of whom later met a grisly fate: mauled to death by Princess Anne's bull terrier--the corgi, not the footman, we should specify, given HRM's nasty streak), to Swedish elk trashing a retirement home drunk on fermented apples and a pet parrot tossed from a bar for taking sips of customers’ pints, we’ve certainly seen our share of fauna that’ve dulled their senses with the drink.

In a small North Austrian town, a concerned dog owner--a hunter-- arrived at the vet with a Labrador, ‘Dingo’. [Editor's note: Given that the country in question, is in fact Austria and not Australia, we insist that you show respect for your fellow cubicle dwellers and refrain from uttering that famous phrase, regardless of how spot-on you think your Aussie brogue might be].

Reports state that ‘Dingo’ was swaying heavily and unable to walk, and given the penchant for hunters to set their sights on targets of a more chilled, stationary and aluminum variety, the man quipped: "Nasty-minded people often say that we hunters are often drunk, but in my case it was the dog."

Indeed he was, after it was discovered that Dingo had devoured half a kilo of fresh yeast dough which had then fermented inside his belly. According to a vet, not referring to the hunter, “When I got him up on the table, it smelt like a distillery."

Go Fish! The lush, the fish and the flush

For people who live in apartment buildings where successive years of poodle crap in the elevators and the enduring smell of cat piss in closed spaces with poor air circulation has resulted in a ban on all four-legged pets, the choice for animal companionship most typically falls between a fish and a bird (or a snake if you’re a lone male with a love of tattoos and skateboarding videos).

The latter option poses a problem for those in high-rise buildings – your balcony giving the creature a head start when it chooses to fly the coop while you’re vacuuming excrement out of its cage – and, besides, despite what that wily pet store owner might have had you believe, your average cockatoo can’t be counted on to sing a few verses of “Margaritaville” to entertain dinner guests upon a snap of the fingers. And if you’re in a house when Polly croaks its last tune, it will likely be dug out of the yard by the neighbour’s cat if the thing is too big to sink down the commode.

Fish make for easier pets to maintain, partly because they require about as much interaction as your average Nevada shrubbery. What’s more, they make for ideal teaching tools for your offspring who are lower down on the Piaget development scale, giving them both a sense of responsibility and, when they utterly fail to live up to that responsibility and the fish dies of neglect in a filthy tank, a life lesson in the fleeting nature of existence, as you stand together on the side of the porcelain bowl and hum the “Ave Maria” before flushing Phil the Gill to his great reward. (That is unless it is one of the more exotic varieties and can be turned into a fillet when the kids are over at the neighbours’.)

An 18-year-old in Brisbane, Australia recently ransacked the home of a vacationing woman, and conducted just such a ritual, but prior to receiving the belly-up notice that usually precedes it. From the reports on the story, the man, who was, of course, walleyed drunk at the time of the raid, did not steal anything, smashing a Sony Playstation console and ripping out the woman’s telephone from her wall. But, in a bizarre flourish at the raid’s end reminiscent of the man who bit off a duck's head in a drunken rage last month, the man dipped into the woman’s aquarium, scooped all of her exotic fish and flushed them down the toilet.

The presiding judge in the case was aghast. "Some may find that humorous," she said, correctly, continuing “I don't. I find it a bit sick and obviously distressing to the owners". Indeed, the judge was so taken aback by the man’s actions that she felt it necessary to stick in a final jab by saying “he’s also an unattractive human being”. As we are guessing that in general the most beautiful of Australia’s people are not the ones being paraded in the courts on charges relating to drunken raids, this comment seems as unnecessary as the fatal flush itself.

The fish flusher, a father of two who have our sympathies, was said to be in no position to pay a fine and was given a year of community service and told to receive treatment for his alcohol problem. (Full story here)

Crocodile Hunter: After my smile, crocodile?

Excessive alcohol in one’s system can, like the very best cocaine, result in a sense of fearlessness and a Friday night that is a damn sight more entertaining than it would have otherwise been. However, it can also prove dangerous if this lack of fear results in you, say, saying making an ass of yourself at a charity luncheon that was supposed to be alcohol free, or, in the case of the Aussie guy whose horrific drunken night out is currently making the rounds, having a crocodile chomp down on your face.

News sources did not mention if the man had been tilting a few at the travel agent’s office; his motivations are unclear for having chosen to spend part of his camping his holiday in Cow Bay, in Northern Australia, along a strip of beach later described by a local doctor as “crocodile highway”. This is not the kind of place where you’d want to be out backstroking in the moonlight since, as far as crocodiles are concerned, the night time is indeed the right time for munching on careless travelers.

The man in question jumped in the water for a late-night swim and when a wave rolled in he dove headfirst into it – not the right move. He thought at first that he had hit rocks, but with all the movement he quickly realized this was not so, and, in what you would have thought would have been one of those instantly-sobering moments of life, he realized just how wrong he was when the upset crocodile bit him in the face.

Had this story gone the predictable route and the man ended up an intestine-sandwich on the floor of the bay, this would be one for the good people at the Darwin Awards. As it played out, it is a story the authors of The Shark Book gladly add to their compendium of remarkable drunken feats. The drunken vacationer managed to escape to safe ground – remarkable in itself (source story suggests that the crocodile was small, but still) but what merits this guy the gold star in our book (or the “Purple Liver”) is that he was so drunk that he didn’t immediately realize the extent of his injuries, returned to his tent and fell asleep.

Yes, that’s right, he had pumped himself so full of the amber anesthetic that he didn’t see the pressing need to visit the hospital so that the giant bite that a crocodile took out of his face – a wound that later required 40 stitches to close – could be treated. (Full story here).

Duck Hunting!

“You hand in your ticket, and go watch the geek, who immediately walks up to you when he hears you speak, and says, ‘How does it feel to be such a freak?’
And you say, ‘Impossible’ as he hands you a bone."

Bob Dylan “Ballad of a Thin Man”

One of our favourite sections of The Shark Book comprised tales involving alcohol and animals (in the Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom rather than the John Belushi/ National Lampoon sense of the word) – a sure bet when it comes to hilarity as anyone who has ever been bored with nothing but a house-pet and a 24 to entertain themselves with will know. This section entitled “You Animal” chronicles animals with alcoholic tendencies – among them “Bongo”, the NYC chimp who raided his family’s liquor cabinet and went on a wild, destructive bender that ended in the biting of an interfering human’s toe – and also daring drunks who challenged mother nature while drunk and found out that mother nature can be, well, a mother.

Recently we’ve been following a story (full story here) that could have fit among the latter, though unfortunately in this case the disturbed drunkard had all the odds. He committed an act that one would have hoped had went the way of the pay-a-dime-and-glimpse-the-freak circuses of the past – geeking, which has nothing to do with this, but rather refers to the act of biting the head off an animal, usually a live chicken (though it is said a snake will do in a pinch), in public (Alan Prendergast, from the “Latest Word” blog, found quite a telling description of what it takes to “get a man to geek” from a 40s noir novel here).

In this case , it was a duck, one of many that a hotel in Minnesota had purchased as mascots to fill their lobby (the bird is pretty popular in the land of 10,000 lakes and immeasurably more hunters once duck season begins). The man in question, who in a nice twist was a visiting health auditor from Colorado traveling on the taxpayer’s dime, arrived at the hotel drunk in the wee small hours and proceeded to chase down the duck (one of a crew of “domesticated ducks” that the hotel had brought in for $400 a head), trap it in a corner and, in an unexpected finale, tear its head off.

As other customers and hotel staff looked at him in shock and revulsion the man explained, “I’m hungry, I’m gonna eat it”. Now, while both of us can attest to the fact that duck, particularly when prepared with just the right sauce, is rather toothsome, the man’s explanation points to alcohol’s tendency to push one toward the irrational. It is unlikely that the hotel, where the duck was later referred to as “part of the family”, would have prepared it for him in the kitchen, and it is unlikely indeed that the man’s room had any means by which he could properly cook such demanding fare.

Arrested for his actions, the man who, weirdly, already has a record for wrongful duck death, couldn’t figure out what he’d done wrong. “Big deal, it's just a *sensitive eyes spared an expletive* duck,” he said. The auditor was freed on $10,000 bail (!), put on administrative leave and now faces charges in duck-loving Minnesota of animal cruelty, which, given the potential jury pool and his “devil may care about our wetlands friends” attitude, could mean a big headache down the road.

Humor Book Takes World by Storm!! Welcome to The Shark Book

Welcome to the official blog for “The Man Who Scared a Shark to Death and Other True Tales of Drunken Debauchery” (to be known henceforth as “The Shark Book” and ourselves as 'The Shark Guys' in the interest of preserving keystrokes and somehow helping the environment). Along with providing all the latest information on various goings-on related to The Shark Book, this blog will also be where we will post updates about the authors – articles, appearances, arrest warrants, and of course news on the next book. Stories that did not make the final version of the book for various reasons – considerations of good taste (I believe only one failed to rise over that decidedly low bar), length concerns, or because we had one-too-many stories involving a circus animal getting its own back from a drunken trainer etc – will occasionally be posted here.

We will also be continuing in our Shark-like tradition of pointing to and commenting heavily on various news stories of folks compromised by the drink, or, well, any other weird item that one of us finds similarly appealing.

When we originally set about writing The Shark Book our intention was to compile stories that one could thumb through after a night of being downright beastly on booze and from which one could draw a measure of comfort and some welcome perspective while the guilt and recriminations set in. (It must be said though that some readers might find that the book hits a little too close to home. In these cases, finding next-day comfort through reading materials would likely be less of a concern than, say, coming up with bail money).

We hope that the book can still fill that need, however both of us at some point came to the same conclusion about what makes for a good laugh, and it, more than anything, will influence what we post here. Mel Brooks put it about as well as anybody has when he said “Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall in a sewer and die”.*

We welcome your comments, your own tales of drunken derring-do and your personal banking information. Wait, no! That must have been the daiquiris talking.

First round's on us! Sante!

(Note: While we kept away from the usually downright unfunny tales of people drinking themselves to death – mostly [a tale of a couple of Irish drinking buddies in a “Weekend at Bernie’s”-type scenario, where one expires in the backseat of a car after an incredible multiple-gallon session of boozing only to be chauffeured around the next day by his unknowing pal comes to mind] – we did have a chapter in the book called “Last call and last rites: funereal debauchery”).