Animality lurks everywhere!

- April 2011 Fish and Wildlife Services of the U.S. announce the extinction of cougars in New England.

- July 26th 2011 a cougar shows in Connecticut having walked 1,500 miles from the Black Hills of South Dakota. Apparently this cougar had been reading the Fish and Wildlife Services reports and wanted to repopulate the area or just prove the government surveyors wrong.

- So, what should be done with this beast who walked so far? What are the possibilities of re-population, what are the rewards for his heroism of traversing long, treacherous distances? After being spotted among the homes and estates of Greenwich, CT, it is struck and killed on Wilbur Cross Parkway and becomes another animal victim on the road of American progress.

- His body, his presence and his death haunt us still. The NY Times's David Baron writes: "if a cougar can walk from South Dakota to Connecticut, a cougar could show up anywhere." No safe is immune from the possibilities of animality. The virtual of the animal lurks and can erupt and tear the fabric of the social surface at any moment.

RIP Fred the Baboon squad leader

Fred was known as a ringleader of baboons in a tourist area of Cape Town, South Africa and was infamous for his ability to open closed car doors. He was euthanized because of his aggressive tactics.

More than 400 baboons roam Cape Town's outskirts, particularly the popular scenic sites along the coast. They are a protected species but have a number of run-ins with humans.

Radioactive Rabbit

A radioactive rabbit was trapped on the Hanford nuclear reservation, and Washington state health workers have been searching for contaminated rabbit droppings.

The regional director of the Office of Radiation Protection, Earl Fordham, said Thursday that no contaminated droppings have been found in areas accessible to the public.

The Tri-City Herald reports that officials suspect the rabbit sipped some water left from the recent demolition of a Cold War-era building used in the production of nuclear weapons.

The rabbit was trapped in the past week and was highly contaminated with radioactive cesium.

(from Salon.com)

This is similar to the radioactive boar post earlier this year as a return of the repressed.

Radioactive Boars, a return of the repressed

Yeah, we forgot all about Chernobyl. We just up and abandoned the site but animals haven't. They inhabit our disasters and return them to us in new strange fur and teeth forms. Wild boars in southern Germany have been feeding off the plant life and roots deep in the ground that have absorbed radiation. These boars then take to the countryside and city looking for food and generally causing a ruckus. They are not only vicious, they are radioactive! Techne and animality return to foil the human.

If, as Nietzche claims, our strength is our ability to forget (or as Freud might say, our ability to repress), then these boars leverage against our strength. We've forgotten the radioactivity while they absorb it and live it only to return it to us. Super-boars for the comic books?

More info from Spiegel online and NPR.

A stroll in the woods gone bad...

"Swedish police say they've cleared a man who was arrested for allegedly murdering his wife after deciding the culprit was most likely a moose.

Police spokesman Ulf Karlsson says 'the improbable has become probable' in the puzzling death last year of 63-year old Agneta Westlund. She was found dead after an evening stroll in the forest."

Wild sheep in Iceland are captured

Thanks to Bryndis Snaebjornsdottir for calling this to my attention. As she describes it "In the north east of Iceland they found a small flock of 'wild' sheep that had become a special breed, 'mountain sheep. Sheep are not allowed to be wild so they had to be hunted, caught and killed - view the death of the wild Icelandic sheep. Apparently 5 sheep escaped but another trip is being planned to exterminate them.

The idea that humans make the final call on what is "allowed" to be wild and what must be domesticated and/or slaughtered is the hubris of humanism. Call in the commando sheep.