mandag den 19. november 2012

Alas poor wolf - an update

The possible wolf that showed up in Denmark recently - and in my last post - elicited the kind of reactions you would expect. A lot of people were over the moon about it, talking about how fantastic it would be to have this large predator back in Denmark. And of course the panic mongers started coming out of the woodwork, screaming about what all those treehugging greenie f****** hippies would say when the wolf attacked their child - which it would certainly do, because we know from scientific sources (Little Red Riding Hood and so forth) that wolves are bloodthirsty killers...bla, bla, bla.And could we please send a lot of hunters and policemen out there and kill it as quickly as possible.

Fortunately not everybody lost their head in such an obvious manner. The environmental authorities mounted a whole string of automatic cameras all over the area and supplied the animal with plenty of bait - dead deer and various other juicy pieces of meat - and then sat back and waited. It almost ended in a major stampede, as some started to offer rewards for a definite picture of the animal. Luckily the reward offer was withdrawn before people started galloping all over the restricted area where the "wolf" was seen

Alas poor wolf - the story did not have a happy ending. As can be seen from this link:

http://jyllands-posten.dk/indland/article4913999.ece

the animal was found dead a couple of days ago. Everybody feared it had been shot by some vigilante type or poisoned, but it seems the poor animal died from starvation inspite of the large number of camerabaits. It is now going to be dissected to determine the exact course of death, and a DNA-test will be performed to see whether it was in fact a wolf, and if so from what population.

Stay tuned for further developments.