Man cleared of murder after evidence points to drunken elk..

[HipChick]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article6945251.ece

[Jamastiene]

1. Oh, this has some real potential.

Perfect. Friday night. Thread.

:popcorn:

I read that as "Man cleared of murder after evidence points to drunken elf..." at first though.

[BrklynLiberal]

2. That is a headline worthy of The Onion.

[marmar]

3. I thought that was an Onion headline......

nt

[BrklynLiberal]

4. Great minds....

[no limit]

7. +1

[Schema Thing]

5. Maybe now Obama will take pot seriously

If this Elk had gotten baked instead of pissed, that lady would still be alive.

[BlueIris]

6. Thanks! My cat just blogged about it. nt

[mockmonkey]

8. hmmmm?

Why does the Times Online show a picture of a moose? Do drunk Elk wear Moose antlers instead of lampshades?

[Cicada]

11. elk may mean moose in Sweden

Swedes may use thw word elk to refer to what we call moose. The dog breed elkhound refers to dogs bred to hunt moose, for instance.

[Igel]

34. That seems to have nailed it.

But not just the Swedes, since a translator would simply use the proper English word.

There is no single proper English word for the critter in the photo. Americans, perhaps including Canadians, have one usage, and would call it a moose; British and therefore the EU in speaking English have another word, and call it an elk.

American "elk" = "wapiti" and similar to though distinct from "red deer"

American "moose" = European "elk"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moose
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elk

[Jamastiene]

13. At first, I thought that moose had panties hanging off his antlers.

I still don't know what that is hanging off his antlers. It looks like he has a hangover though.

[asdjrocky]

9. I am not stoned enough for this....

yet.

[Thickasabrick]

10. I loved the picture of an elk they had for the article so I am posting it

below:



Why does he have tassels hanging off his horns?

[Jamastiene]

14. Lol, it's elk panties.

He's had a hard night of drinking and parting. I have woke up looking like that before.

[Thickasabrick]

21. LOL nt

[scarletwoman]

17. The "tassels" are shreds of what is called "velvet" that covers antlers when they first develop.

It's a skin that covers the antlers when they first develop, complete with tiny blood vessels. All antlered ruminants have it. They scrape off the velvet by rubbing their antlers/horns on trees.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antler

sw

[Gold Metal Flake]

19. Damn! Foiled again by being such a slow typist.

Extra points for using ruminants. :toast:

Edited to fix spelling

[scarletwoman]

22. LOL! I'm just glad to see that I'm not the only person who knows about antlers and velvet!

Thanks for the extra points! I've been living in the north woods for over 20 years, I *know* my ruminants. I ruminate quite a bit myself. :P

Cheers! :toast:
sw

[Gold Metal Flake]

24. I WISh I lived in the North Woods.

I loved the nature films they used to show us in school. We had plenty of whate tail deer in Texas and Louisiana but I have never seen an elk or moose in nature.

I so want to live in a woody area, but not Louisiana. The Pacific NW is painfully beautiful to me. I am so tired of looking at concrete and flames.

[dflprincess]

25. I've never seen a moose in the wild either

There is, however, a couple at the Minnesota Zoo. One time I had some nieces & nephews at the zoo and, as we came to the moose enclosure, there stood Mr. Moose and on a branch right above him was a squirrel. Giving me a legitimate reason to say "Look kids - Moose & Squirrel!"

:rofl: Sometimes I just crack myself up.

Then there was the time we were there in the fall and Mr. & Mrs. Moose were separated so there would be no little moose in the spring. Mrs. Moose was in the public area and off in the background somewhere the Mister was making the most horrible bellowing sounds (I suppose in moosespeak he was saying "Oh, baby, please! I'll still respect you.") But just how do you explain to little kids why Mr. Moose is moaning like he's going to die?

[scarletwoman]

27. OMG! "Moose and squirrel"!

:rofl:

I was up close and personal with lots of moose when I lived in Alaska. Sometimes my kids couldn't get to the school bus stop because of them. One thing you learn right away is to keep away from the moose -- which was difficult where we lived, since we were living in the middle of their migration trail, in the foothills of the Talkeetna mountains.

Hitting a deer on the road in Minnesota is a mess, hitting a moose could very often be fatal. In Alaska, if you saw a moose standing in the road, you just stopped and waited and hoped they wouldn't charge your car. They're really cranky buggers. And they're fucking HUGE!

At the end of the harvest season, what was left behind in my vegetable garden became a salad bar to the moose as they migrated down from the Talkeetna mountains. They were particularly partial to the broccoli stalks.

The last spring I lived there, I found a beautiful moose antler in my yard that had been shed in the previous fall. It sits atop my bookshelf to this day.

sw

[Gold Metal Flake]

29. Poor fella only wanted to fulfill his purpose.

His special purpose.

Minnesota sounds so nice. DFL, the Wellstone legacy, progressives, seasons. Sure, thr grass is always greener, but northermn LA county kinda sucks.

[scarletwoman]

32. I lived in Venice (L.A.) in my youth. I've been around a bit...

But, no matter where I lived, I always ended up back in Minnesota. It truly is the best place in the world to me. :)

sw

[scarletwoman]

26. The Pacific NW is deleriously wonderful. I spent over a year living in the San Juan Islands in WA.

I lived in Alaska for 6 years and had herds of moose hanging out in my yard twice every year -- in the fall when they migrated down from the mountains, and in the spring when they migrated back up. They're very dangerous -- cantankerous and unpredictable. There are fatalities every year in Alaska of people getting stomped to death by moose.

Most of the time I've lived in northern Minnesota, my birthplace and current home. It's whitetail deer country where I live, so I see them year 'round. For me, there's no greater blessing than living as I do in the forest, with eagles and ravens and coyotes and wolves and deer all around. It helps that I love winter too, of course. :) I'll always be a Northern girl.

sw

[Gold Metal Flake]

31. I've not been to WA state yet but I was knocked out by Oregon.

I'm hip that moose are huge and ornery. But even coyotes look cool from a distance. maybe I'll take a drive this weekend and look at the Pacific. It's hard to set that on fire. :-)

[Thickasabrick]

20. Wow....I did not know that - thanks nt

[scarletwoman]

23. I live only to serve.

:D

[Gold Metal Flake]

18. Elk (moose), elk (not moose) Moose, deer and other antlered animals...

...grow their antlers yearly and shed them yearly. When they grow they are covered with a thin fuzzy skin called velvet. Once grown, the skin starts to dry and split, and the animals rub and scrape them on trees and stuff to get this skin off. The moose/elk in the pix appears to have some fresh antlers with some residual velvet hanging off.

[HipChick]

12. Grissom would have had this solved in 60mins..

[pipi_k]

15. Oh sure, it's all fun and games till the elk gets blotto and murders someone

Wonder if he's got an alibi...

[Shell Beau]

16. This is sad not funny, but the idea of a drunken elk is too much for me.

[csziggy]

28. This paragraph has me LOL!

"Typically weighing up to half a tonne, elk are best avoided when they are tipsy. They have entered department stores, got stuck in lifts, attacked skiers and barged into kitchens. If they see a parked motorist munching a sandwich, they have been known to knock on the window and demand a bite."

Are they polite about it (Pardon me, may I have a taste?) or are they obnoxious drunks (Gimmee some of that!)? :rofl:

The picture accompanying this story at Huffington Post:



http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/28/police-murderous-swedish-_n_372809.html

[dflprincess]

30. Thank heavens they don't have fingers and thumbs

or they'd probably be doing drunk dialing as well.

[scarletwoman]

33. "Do you have Prince Albert in a can?"

"Is your refrigerator running?"

:rofl:

[1]

35. i'll bet that elk was a smoker too, fucking drinking, smoking elk...

[Nikki Stone1]

36. The poor man, serving time for an elk. That's gotta suck.

:rofl: