The moose is back - and this time they mean business!

Inspired by the fact that on November 19th. five young Swedish moose arrived in Denmark, and is now galliwanting, or whatever it is you call the rather peculiar gait of a moose, around in a very big enclosure in Lille Vildmose in Northern Denmark awaiting the day next spring, where they will be set free and become the first officially sanctioned wildliving moose in Denmark for about 5000 years. 

I use the words ”officially sanctioned” very carefully because there has been a number of cases where said large member of the deer tribe, has taken it upon itself to turn up in Denmark under its own steam, thus making a mockery of the 5000 years. Most people have no idea – and if you look a the general build of the thing, who can blame them – that moose are in fact excellent swimmers. The are not exactly sprinters, but they have incredible strenght and stamina, and they can even dive and swim under water for considerable distance and for several minutes on end. In fact I am quite convinced, that a large proportion of lake monster-sightings in the Northern Hemisphere are in fact sightings of swimming moose – but that’s an entirely different story.

Whereas Denmark lost its population of moose several thousand years ago, the Swedish population is big and healthy and has apparently been so for a very long time. So every now and then a moose takes it upon itself to swim from Sweden to Denmark. Nobody really knows why this happens, whether it is deliberate, or whether an animal simply gets disoriented and ends up in swimming in the completely wrong direction. It happens to migrating birds all the time, so why not moose? It doesn’t really matter how or why – it is a monumental feat. The shortest distance between Sweden and Denmark is 4 km, but that is between the towns of Elsinore and Helsingborg, an area with a lot of sailing activity and very powerful currents, and nobody has ever seen a moose in this area. So we are in fact probably talking about a swim of at least 6 or 7 km.

Some never make it of course – in a couple of instances, dead moose have washed ashore in Denmark, but some make it, generally landing on the North coast of the island of Zealand, somewhere west of the town of Elsinore. This in a fairly thinly populated area with a lot af agricultural land, and a fair selection of wooded areas, one of which, Grib Skov, if in fact one of the two biggest forests in Denmark. So it is basically a very suitable area for a moose.

The first and most successful one landed in Denmark in 1933. It managed to live in Denmark for no less than 18 years, most of the time around the village of Nødebo which is located more or less in the centre of the afore mentioned Grib Skov. After some years it was so used to people, that it would turn up in the middle of the village and eat the vegetables from the greengrocers’ boxes and the flowers in people’s gardens. Since then, there have so far been 5 others, and one that was bought by a Danish newspaper and released in the same general area a year after the first one died in 1951, in the hope of recreating the popularity of the first moose, which had turned into quite a tourist attraction.

That one had to be recaptured within a few weeks, because it was making a nuisance of itself. It was sent to a zoo, where it unfortunately died soon after. It didn’t work out to well for the other ones. One of them, a very large bull had to be shot, two of them had a rather messy end following an all to close encounter with respectively a car and a train, one simply vanished, and one was found sick and dying in the forest.

According to Swedish authorities, a few others have actually tried to swim across, but have been stopped before they got more than a few hundred meters away from the Swedish coast, and brought back to the safety of their homeland.

And then of course, there are the ones lurking in my files – there has been a few other sightings of moose in the same general area, one as far back as 1897, but they have never been confirmed in the same way as the others, although I do know of a couple who have in their possession a set of massive moose antlers, and they are adamant they are from an animal shot by the lady’s grandfather near the town of Roskilde sometime during the First World War. Oh – and a few years ago a dead moose washed ashore on the North coast of the island of Bornholm, the extreme Easternmost island in Denmark. That one must have tried to swim from the South of Sweden.  but probably drowned from exhaustion – it is after all a swim of at least 50 km.

And then we have the newcomers – who knows, in a few years time we may have a permanent population of moose in Denmark, and I for one am looking forward to it. Meeting a moose in the wild is absolutely magical. I have heard blackbirds making more noise turning over leaves on the forest floor, than a moose silently drifting through the forest.

What is this feline I see before me?

There are times when I wonder what is going on in my tiny little country. Now is one of them – not only has the entire government lost their collective minds (if indeed they have ever had them) – but the nature has lost its as well, even the cryptozoological ones. First there was the wolves, then there was the golden jackal, and now it seems we have to consider the puma as well.

Not that alien big cats are a completely unknown entity in Denmark, far from it, but this new case seems to take the biscuit as it were (cat biscuit perhaps). In the last couple of weeks people in northern Germany, specifically in the area north of the town of Flensburg, have claimed several sightings of a big brownish cat with a small head, a long tail and rather short fat legs, in other words a puma. German police have been out looking for the thing on several occasions, but have as yet not found anything – one do get the impression though, that they are not taking the whole thing to seriously (yes, they do have a sense of humour!).

Nevertheless, seen from the Danish side of the border, it is fairly interesting, not the least because several of the eyewitnesses have seen the animal almost at the border, and in two cases actually coming from Denmark and moving towards Germany.

It is in areas like this in Northern Germany and Southern Denmark, the alleged puma is running around.

An escaped animal no doubt, but from where – and in actual fact, how many – because not long after this story broke in the newspapers, Danish eyewitnesses started coming out of the woodwork or wherever these people are hiding, and telling me about several sightings in the same area in 2014 (and in 2013, 2012, 2010 and 2008 if the stories in my files are anything to go by).

Unfortunately the scaremongers crawled forth as well from whatever rock they usually hide under (one of them sadly the director of one of the biggest zoological gardens in Denmark) and started screaming at the top of their lungs about what a dangerous animal a puma was (try telling that to the millions of people in North- and South America who live quite happily along side pumas, in many cases without ever knowing it). All we need now is some local hick politician wanting to arrange a hunt to protect women and children from the fearsome predator.

I for one would suggest a couple of deep breaths and a calming something. First of all, it can well be a puma, in that case no doubt an escapee from some idiot who has kept it as a pet in his garage, or from some small animal park somewhere, who is afraid to admit that they have lost one of their animals fearing damage responsibility and what have you.

But – it may not be anything at all. People are so easily led to believe things, to see things, to hear things, just because they have read a scary story in a newspaper somewhere. Some years ago I was called in  to have a look at a lion that had been lying out in a field for several days. Everybody in the area had worked themselves up to borderline hysteria, but hadn’t called in the police because they feared ridicule. In hindsight that was a good idea, because it turned out the lion was a very large brown paperbag. But everybody was so convinced it was a lion, that even people with binoculars saw nothing but a lion, when they looked at the thing. Myself, and a friend I brought with me, recognized the paperback at once because we were not as completely worked up as the local people.

As for this new puma, there are no pictures so far, apart from one taken with an old mobilephone from such a long distance it could be anything – and no domesticated animal has been killed, as far as anyone knows. All I need is a hair!!!

There shall be beetles and cockroaches

According to Bernard Heuvelmans cryptozoology is all about unexpected animals - large and small. Is doesn't have to be big scary monsters every time, so with that in mind, I thought I would report on yeat another couple of additions to the Danish fauna, and this time within one of my favourite subjects - microcryptozoology.

http://www.fugleognatur.dk/gallery.asp?mode=ShowLarge&ID=441934

The littlest ant-lover
October 25th. just one months ago, Danish entomologist Poul Ulrik was talking a walk at a place called Dybbølsbro, close to Copenhagen Central trainstation. Noticing a loose paving-slab, he turned it over and saw first of all, a large number of ants, but also in among the ants, a tiny 3 mm long cricket. On closer inspection this turned out to be of a specied called Myrmecophilus acervorum. Myrmecophilus means ant-lover, so the tiny animal was not just a piece of prey for the ants, but a voluntary inhabitant in their nest. M. acervorum has been found in the nests of at least 20 different ant species. It is fairly common and widespread in Europe, but has never been found in Denmark before. Until now, that is...

http://www.fugleognatur.dk/gallery.asp?mode=ShowLarge&ID=441888

150 years in the dark
And then we have this gorgeous thing. This is a tortoise beetle called Pilemostoma fastuosa, and in my humble opinion it could easily have come from a tropical forest somewhere. This individual was actually found on a beach in Southeastern Denmark on November 23rd. in the various plantmatter and other debris that had washed ashore following a stormy couple of days with water levels more than 1 meter above normal. This is not just a rare animal, this is a VERY rare animal. In actual fact this is the first time it has been seen in Denmark for more than 150 years. Just goes to show hos careful you have to be, when you deem an animal (especially a small one) extinct. It was found by naturalist Klaus Bek Nielsen, and it is far from the first time he has found super-rarities like this, but then again he spends most of his time sifting through as much leaf-litter, plant-debris, mouldy pine-needles and abandoned ants-nest as he can lay his hands on.

The days of the jackal

The first day of the jackal was the 6th. of June 2015, when a driver passing the town of Karup in Western Denmark noticed what he thought was a strange looking dog lying at the edge of the road. Intrigued the man stopped for a closer look only to ascertain two things – the animal was dead, but only recently so, and it was indeed a very strange looking dog, about fox-like in stature, but a bit bigger. The man considered leaving the animal to the crows, but on a whin decided to put it in the boot of his car and take it away with him.

So off he went, to the home of a friend who is an experienced hunter. He couldn’t identify the animal either, but he did have a large freezer, into which the animal was put. Next stage was the showing of said weird animal to various interested parties, none of which was able to identify it with any degree of certainty. It was clear that closer examination was called for. 3 months and various DNA-analysis and tests later came…

The second day of the jackal on Sep. 10th, when the people of Denmark was informed, that yet another large carnivorous mammal had entered the country. To some people it was a bit much, coming so soon after the official reappearance of the wolf in Denmark in 2012 after an absence of a couple of centuries. Anyway – as it turned out, the animal was a golden jackal (Canis aureus), and although its presence was quite a surprise, it was not totally unexpected. The jackals normal distribution range is quite a bit to the southeast of Denmark, but the jackal population in Central and Southeastern Europe has been growing in recent years, and as jackals are great wanderers, some animals had already been sighted far away from their normal ranges. Some has been seen in Germany, and a few brave individuals has even gotten as far north as Eastern Finland.

Strangeley enough I have received a couple of sightings of ”large golden brownish/grey foxes” from southern Denmark within the last coulpe of yeatrs, which I haven’t been able to explain. Well-  maybe I can now.

An then things got a little bit weird.

Because although it was fairly clear the animal was equipped in such a way as to be deemed male, it didn’t seem to have any testicles. Under these circumstances it could conceivably be a former castrated captive that somehow had escaped from somewhere.

So, time for a detailed dissection/autopsy to set the scene for:

(Pictures of the dead animal and the actual autopsy can be found at: http://www.vet.dtu.dk/Nyheder/2015/10/Guldsjakal-er-blevet-obduceret-paa-DTU-Veterinaerinstituttet?id=587cafad-8880-4570-9932-84f2a113066c)

The third day of the jackal, in fact October 20th, when it was finally announced, that the animal did indeed have testicles – they had just been knocked into the abdomen when the animal was hit by the car that killed it.

So in other words – yet another large mammal joins the official list of Danish species! Not bad.

The tales of two sets of tusks - and a little bit of unicorn lore

The unicorn must be one of the most wellknown, and dare I say legendary lengendary beasts. Much has been written about these creatures, and about how the stories of them originated, so I shall refrain from doing so again. Instead I will tell a little story or two about the narwal - this strange small arctic whale who has supplied one of the key ingredients of the story of the unicorn - the horn. Actually the tooth - the fronttooth of the narwal. This is long - sometimes very long - twisted and made of very hard and dense ivory.

What the whales actually use them for is a matter of debate. Some say they are the whale equivalent of antlers. Some say they are used to root around in the bottom of the sea for the various prey animals of the narwals. And some say they are simply weapons - or perhaps a combination of all three. What ever their use, they have been highly valued an indeed prized through the ages. Even today, where the superstition have been stripped away, a good size narwaltusk is worth a fortune.

So what am I actually getting at - well, the Natural History Museum in Copenhagen opened a new exhibition a couple of months ago. There is no zoological or biological theme to this exhibition. It is simply those specimens and objects that the people of the various departments of the museum thought extraordinary - and this is where the narwal comes in again. You see one of the exhibits is a narwal - incidently the strange name narwal comes from old norse, and it means corpse whale, which is not as bad a name as one might think, as a narwal does have a colour not unlike a corpse that has been in the water for at bit too long - an exhibit of an animal with two mighty tusks. Had this animal been caught in medieval times, its tusks could probably have paid for a mediumsized kingdom with all the trimmings.

Impressive looking beast if you ask me. But closer examination of the other narwal exhibits revealed something even more impressive, as the following picture shows. It doesn't look like much, but it is in fact no less than two different narwal tusks with the tip of two other narwal tusks embedded in them! How on earth that has happened, I have no idea. It must be the cetological equivalent of Robin Hoods famous arrow splitting.