Wednesday Weird: La Bête du Gévaudan

I really thought I had done a Wednesday Weird on this topic before, but I checked all my posts and I couldn't find one, so proceed I shall.

La Bete du Gevaudan (the beast of Gévaudan) was a real wolf-like monster that prowled the Auvergne and South Dordogne areas of France 1764 -1767, killing people often in bizarre circumstances. Many men and professional hunters would try to kill the beast, but almost all of them would fail.

The first recorded attack was a young woman in 1764. The beast approached her as she was tending oxen. Her dogs fled, but the oxen drove the beast away. Shortly after the beast would kill 14-year-old Janne Boulet.

After that, the beast would spend two years hunting and killing men, women and children. Most often it would attack single people as they tended their animals in fields or in the woods, but on more than one occasion it would attack larger groups of people, sometimes succeeding in killing multiple victims. Often times only pieces of victims would be found, if their bodies were found at all.

The number of attacks vary, depending on the source, but it killed somewhere between 60 and 113 adults and children, and injuring another 30-49. Many of the victims killed were partly eaten, and it frequently focused its attacks on the throat or head.

Descriptions also vary, but what most people agreed on was that it was reminiscent of a wolf, but the size of a calf or a donkey. It had a strange red coat, square head with small ears and white chest. It had a strangely long tail, like a cat.

 

 

On more than one occasion peasants or professional wolf hunters would shoot the beast, and the bullets would not kill it. There were also rumors that perhaps the beast wasn't alone, because more than once attacks happened at almost the same time.

Many wolves were killed in the attempt to put an end to the beast. Louis XV offered rewards and sent hunters to help, but though one hunter did kill a particularly large wolf (5'7" in length) it would prove to not be the beast, as the killing continued a month later.

The man credited with finally putting an end to the beast is Jean Chastel, a 60 year old man sent to hunt the beast. He shot the beast with his shotguns and his dogs finished the deed.
Upon examination, witnesses would stand by the fact that the beast was not a wolf, but by the time the body arrived in Paris it was so putrefied that it was buried immediately.

Nowadays many people think the beast was a wolf, perhaps deformed, or a wolf-dog hybrid, or something else entirely. Unfortunately we'll probably never know for sure what it was. But regardless, it did indeed kill many people, an act that would be strange for any animal, monster or not.

It is still a famous bit of strange history and occasionally shows up in pop culture

If you haven't seen this movie, you should. It deals directly with the beast and is also pretty good

 

Thoughts or theories?

Wednesday Weird: Paris Wild Cat

I like when I'm able to do current or ongoing weird things, and today is one of them!

In Paris, near Disneyland, there have been sightings of a large wild cat.

The cat was spotted near a grocery store, crossing a highway, and near a gas station,

Last week, someone said the cat was a tiger, but after an expert looked at some paw prints, they declared that the cat was not, in fact, a tiger.

So the question remains: what is it?

It's not like Paris has any sort of large wild cat population. In the US we have cougars and jaguars, and though they generally stick to certain places, we've certainly even had them roaming up here in MN (cougars at least. Not jaguars (yet...))

But with people owning all sort of exotic animals as pets, it could really be anything.

All they know for sure, so far, is that the cat is a cat, and that it's not a tiger. What kind of cat or where it came from is still a mystery.

There is a nearby wildcat sanctuary, but the only problem there is, none of their cats are missing.

Some people suggested that the tracks belonged to a big dog,  but the head of the Paris regional Wolfcatcher Society states the tracks could not have been falsified.

(Which, let's just take a moment to think about how frickin BADASS it is that Paris has a regional Wolfcatcher Society. Because OF COURSE they do. Especially after that whole La Bête du Gévaudan incident back in 1764 (also, I thought I had done a Wednesday Weird post about La Bête du Gévaudan, but apparently I didn't, so I'll have to rectify that soon))

The fun part, though, is there have been some photos!

So, pals, take a look and let me know in the comments what kind of cat you think is roaming around Paris.

 

 

Wednesday Weird

So, I'm starting a new theme on the blog - Wednesday Weird.

I totally love all the crazy, weird, stuff that happens in the world that can't be explained, or can, but is still weird, or fun/crazy animal facts. I could read about that stuff ALL DAY. Serious.

So I've decided to devote a day on my blog to all the fun and crazy stuff out there. Will this happen every Wednesday? Probably. But I certainly reserve the right to switch it up for whatever reason, including blogfests.

Speaking of which, have you signed up for the Teenage Heartthrob Blogfest yet?  I want to see the celebs you crushed on as a teen!

All right! So, onto the first edition of Wednesday Weird!!


What do you think is the largest ant colony in the world? Something as large as a house? A football field?
WRONG!

It turns out an Argentine ant colony is EVERYWHERE.

Seriously. They live in a colony that that spans 4 continents. Yes. You read that right. The small, individual colonies are considered interconnected to all the others because the ants won't fight each other. And we all know if there's one things ants do well, it's go to war.

That and carry relatively heavy things.

Anyway, the global-mega-colony is made up of over 22 million ant hills each with upwards of 10,000 member each.  Math tells us that over 200 billion ants.

Yeah. So there you have it.

Next time you see some kids burning an ant hill, maybe warn them away. Their 200 billion relatives across THE WORLD may decide one day to get some payback.

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In Which We Write Posts To Help Shelter Dogs

Saw this post on Piedmont Writer and decided to jump on.

11 week old Yvie at the shelter

The face that launched a puppy adoption

Pedigree is resurrecting its insanely successful Write a Post, Help a Dog program. In 2010, 391 bloggers wrote about the program and with each post, Pedigree donated 20 pounds of its Healthy Longevity dog food to shelter animals. In all, 7,820 pounds of food was donated to two shelters renowned for their care of senior dogs: Muttville Senior Dog Rescue in San Francisco and Castaway Critters in Harrisburg, Pa.

How you can help in 2011

Simply spread the word about Write a Post, Help a Dog 2011 and once again Pedigree will donate 20 pounds of food for each blogger's post. Here's all you need to include in your post:

The Write a Post, Help a Dog program is aimed at raising awareness and food for the more than four million dogs that wind up in shelters and breed rescues each year.
For each blog post mentioning the Pedigree Foundation from now until midnight ET on September 3, Pedigree will donate 20 pounds of its new dry Pedigree recipe food for dogs -- its best recipe ever -- to a shelter, because every dog deserves leading nutrition.

The Pedigree Foundation -- a 501 (C)(3) nonprofit organization is committed to helping dogs by providing grants to shelters and rescues and encouraging dog adoption. This year the Foundation has already raised more than $376,570 against its goal of $1.5 million to carry out its work to fund grants that not only help shelters operate, but to further shelter innovations.
The Pedigree Foundation depends on charitable contributions from individuals to carry out its mission to help dogs find loving homes. In addition to writing a blog post, here's how you can help:

Donate online at http://pedigreefoundation.org/donate.aspx
Apply for a shelter grant from the Pedigree Foundation by completing a form at www.pedigreefoundation.org
Purchase Dogs Rule Gear at www.dogsrulegear.com where the proceeds go to the Pedigree Foundation to help loving dogs find a home. SPECIAL OFFER: Get 10 percent off Dogs Rule Gear by using the promo code BlogPaws10 from August 22 - September 30.


Now, the deadline for this is TONIGHT, and the link is at The Eagle's Aerial Perspective blog. So please go there, link up, copy and paste, or blog what you can to help this fabulous cause.

In Which Pepper Returns

Last year around this time, I posted a a garden update Here and in the update I had a picture of snakeskin as proof of the garter snake living in our flower garden.

Here's the pic. We named him Pepper, because he spices up our lives.




Well, I was just thinking earlier this week about how I missed Pepper hiding in our yard, when, low and behold, what did Brother find mucnhing on a toad in the flower garden?









Pepper!!

His eyes are milky blue, which means if we keep out eyes open, we'll probably have another snake skin hanging out in the lawn before long.

He actually let me take quite a few pictures of him, once I sat down and stopped moving. I resisted the urge to pet him and instead just held the camera a few inches away to snap some photos.



I feel bad for the toady that Pepper scarffed up, especially since it could've been one of the toads we saved from the egress window a few days ago, but Pepper's welcome to stay as long as he wants.




Also, a reminder that I am officially on vacay, and probably won't be back to the blog for about two weeks. See you when I get back!

Friday Fun

Greetings ape-friends! Yvie's back to fire you burning hot into the weekend! Ka-pow!






Now, I know we've talked about the egress window of doom on this blog before and the things we find in it. Two examples Here and Here (the second link was my favorite thing)

Well, the other night, Mom crawled into the egress window again, with the bucket, and this is what she and Anne pulled out:









11 of them! And once again, Mom didn't let me eat any. Sigh. Since my Mom's no fun, I'll just have to spread some for you!

First though, a warning about the below video:

Now, I'm a dog so I don't get too scared about things. One time, though, I got super scared. At our old home I went outside one day and I found a little girl. Except she wasn't really a little girl. She was flat and fluttered in the wind. Mom tried to explain to me that it was "just a dora the explorer doll stroller" but I knew she was a liar. That thing was a monster.

I tell you this story only to prepare you for the frightening thing in the following video. YOU. HAVE. BEEN. WARNED.








see more Lolcats and funny pictures, and check out our Socially Awkward Penguin lolz!




see more Lolcats and funny pictures, and check out our Socially Awkward Penguin lolz!




see more Lolcats and funny pictures, and check out our Socially Awkward Penguin lolz!



see more Lolcats and funny pictures, and check out our Socially Awkward Penguin lolz!




see more Lolcats and funny pictures, and check out our Socially Awkward Penguin lolz!




see more Lolcats and funny pictures, and check out our Socially Awkward Penguin lolz!


Finally, just a heads up. Starting Next Friday, the blog will be on hiatus for a little over a week due to a family vacay. Mom will blog Monday and Wednesday next week, but I won't see you back here until three weeks. Have a great summer ape-friends!

In Which We Help Japan's Animals

I know many of you have already donated, or are planning on dontating, to relief efforts in Japan. They need it, and many of us have so much.

Unfortunately, pets have been devastated as well, and are so often left to fend for themselves in a crisis.




I hope everyone will consider taking just a small portion of any donation they are planning to make , and consider giving that to an organization that is specifically providing animal relief.




World Vets is an organization that provides assistance to animals around the globe.

From their page:

"World Vets has been monitoring the situation in Japan with regards to the impact of the earthquake and tsunami that has recently hit the island nation. We are currently working to coordinate relief efforts for the animal victims affected by these unfortunate disasters. We have made contact with US Army veterinary associates stationed in Japan as well as Japan based animal charities and World Vets veterinary volunteers who remain on standby. At this time, we have supplies ready to go and are preparing the deployment of a first-responder team to carry out an "on the ground" assessment and provide initial aid. We will post all updates and progress of our efforts on this page.
Your donations are urgently needed to coordinate aid for the animals in Japan. Any amount will help!"







I’ve joined Blog Paws Be the Change in declaring Thursday, March 17th “Paws for Japan” Day. We will be raising awareness of the World Vets effort and encouraging people to donate to their vital work.








Every Little Bit Helps.

DONATE NOW

Friday Fun

Hiya Ape-friends! How was your week? Full of stuff? Hoomin stuff? Of course it was.
Well here I am, Yvie, to try and launch you into the weekend with a blog post of fun.

First, though, a quick personal message about something important to me.

As you know, I was a shelter pup. That's right, wonderful, glorious moi, was dropped off at a shelter as a little pup, scared and alone.
Good thing that only lasted a day before I was brought to my forever home!

Once a year the Animal Humane Society has a Walk For Animals, where participants can raise money for AHS to help provide for all the animals in need. It's the biggest walk in the whole nation!

Me and Anne at the Walk in 2008

I know times are tough for many of my ape-friends out there, but if you can spare a few extra dollars, please consider donating to my walk and our team (Our team name is Team Super Awesome Cool Dynamite Wolf Squadron).

Here's the link. I even wrote the page info, so check it out and consider donating. Every little bit helps another dog, like me, be happy and loved for the rest of their life.




ONTO THE FUN!

Check out this AWESOME LIGHT SHOW! It's amazing, I promise!

Check out more of these HERE

Show Your Space Blogfest

The wonderful, funny, awesome (sexy?) Summer is hosting her first blogfest, a Show Your Writing Space blogfest!

I hopped on that right away, because I love to see where people write (it's along the same lines of why we like to visit open houses and the parade of homes. We love to see the inside of other's homes.)

(On a side note, we checked out an open house on Saturday. Besides being amazingly awesome and making our house look like shit for the same cost, the next door neighbors had a pet fox. For reals. We saw it out in a kennel. The realtor said it lives in the house with them and their small children as well. No fooling, a real fox. Weird)


Back on topic.

I have two writing spaces. One where I do any sort of hand writing (like outlines and editing) and where I make changes on existing pieces. Then I have a space where I actually hunker down and do my writing (like for NaNo).

Here's the actual "sit on my ass and write space":

You can see Miss Bee always has to be close. Often times George will also sit on the other side, but in this picture he's on the right, in that nest of blankets and pillows he created.

It's no big deal. Just a couch, my laptop, my dogs and a TV to the left (I can write and watch TV at the same time. I just get more writing done if the TV is off)

Here's my other writing space, the "editing and outlining space"



This is actually my workspace for my job for "huge health insurance corporation". They let me work from home, and actually provided the furniture.

You can see Yvie's bed on the left where she spends most her time during the day. Tula's bed is on the right.

Here's a close up of the desk.



The notebook on the right is for work. As is the phone and headset. The next one is all that's left for me to line edit on foxfire. The pile to the left of that is the chunk of Foxfire that has been edited but hasn't been updated on the digital copy. Then the huge pile of notebooks contains my blog notebook, My Foxfire notebooks, my short story notebook and a new notebook for NaNo 2010. Then my CDs behind that.

So that's pretty much it, in a nutshell (every time I say "nutshell" I think of the Alice in Chains song by that title. Oh man, SUCH a great song. Check it out when you have some time)

Now, I'm off to check out everyone else's spaces!

Also - LET NANO BEGIN!!!

In Which October Is An Important Month

Taking a short break from my usual silly fun stuff to let you know that October is Adopt a Shelter Dog Month.

This is a month that is near and dear to my heart. Let me tell you a little story why.


It was January 2007. Our family Sheepdog, Bess, had just died unexpectedly on my youngest sister's 16th birthday. My parents were dogless. Twin, Brother and I were living together and had my frenchie George, who was a year old, to heap love upon.

Then, one night, I received a text message from Twin (who works at the shelter).

This was the text message:





I texted her back - "What is it?" even though I was pretty sure I knew.

"A fawn pied frenchie puppy. 11 weeks old."

I tried not to be excited. I always told myself when I got another frenchie, I wanted a fawn pied girl. But I didn't want another dog for 5 years or so.

Twin texted me another message and pic:

"Her owner bought her at a pet store as an impulse buy. She didn't realize how much work a puppy would be. And also she lives in an apartment and the puppy, Boo, cries and barks a lot."




I didn't want a puppy. George was still a puppy, technically, and two puppies at a time was a lot of work.

Twin texted our parents, to see if they were interested. They said it was too soon for them to get a dog again. But they wanted someone to have that puppy, so they'd pay for half of her adoption fee.

This was an unexpected crack in the wall I was trying to build around my heart. Twin and I agreed she'd bring Boo home the next night to employee foster.

I spent the whole next day trying to come up with better names than Boo. Something to match George's "Georgie Porgie Pudding Pie" nursery rhyme name. I already knew, unless it was a complete failure as a match, that she wouldn't be going back to the shelter.

When Twin brought her home from the shelter, she had pooped in her crate and rolled in it (many puppy mill puppies (puppies from pet stores) don't have a concept of staying clean from their waste).

The first time I saw her in person she stank, she was covered in shit, and I already loved her. Brother suggested we call her Evie after V for Vendetta but Twin and I changed it to Yvie, short for Yvette.

There is not a moment of my life where she doesn't fill my heart with love and adoration. Every time I see her, every time I even think of her, I'm filled with joy.

She didn't need to be rescued by us. She would have been adopted in less than a day at the shelter. But we selfishly snatched her up and every day she lights up our lives.

So, now you know why Adopt A Shelter Dog Month is so important. My family surrounds ourselves with dogs, and Yvie stands out. She was less than 300 dollars and worth a thousand, a million times that. There are so many wonderful dogs out there that are willing to share their lives with someone, all they need is a home, a chance, to show you how they can enrich your lives.

In Which There Are Animals

This is a continuation of my MN Renfest posts regarding the season of fun that was had. For food and costume pics, see yesterday and monday.


MN Renfest has a surprising amount of animals. Of course, it helps that you're allowed to bring your own dogs. But look pretty much anywhere and you can find some sort of animal, possibly in costume.

We tend to bring Tula at least once each year. She behaves fantastically, also she's period authentic since the MN Renfest takes place during the Italian Renaissance and Tula is a Spinone Italiano.

awww, puppy Tula! Back before she got giant

Onto the animal pics!

Frenchie Puppy! Full of squeee!

shop dog at Beowulf Clothing

Seamus the tortoise

He wears a kilt

cart horse

piglets at the petting zoo

sorry to tell you this, people, but your "irish wolfhound" has some poodle in him

Yay puppies!

the MN herpetological society has a booth every year

War horse rides anyone?

This is Katie

And this is Daisy

If horses don't do it for you, how about elephants?

You can ride them, or camels if you prefer

Tomorrow, my final renfest post, will be about some activities one can partake in as well as a few miscellaneous photos.