This is an old one, but a great one. Apparently in some places in South London (Brixton), New York, Chicago, anywhere where drugs is a bit of a problem, there are these squirrels that have become unusually aggressive in their search for drugs - having become, as it were, addicted to crack. Or, as I like to say, crack-addled squirrels.
Now there's more than a slight whiff of Urban Legend to this one, but it's been so widely reported that one can't held thinking that maybe, just maybe there's a slight grain of truth to it...but..., well, it's the media after all. Read with caution.
Links: The Sun (UK) - Squirrels go nuts on crack, The Guardian, The NY Times, Various YouTube videos on the Crack Squirrel Problem, Christine O'keefe Aptowicz performs Crack Squirrels, and finally, a seemingly irrelevant connection to Russia where they don't seem to have made the connection - Russian Squirrel Pack Kills Dog.
I couldn't make this stuff up.
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Forteana and Cryptozoology are interests of mine. Not, particularly, going out to look for Bigfoot or Nessie, but the folklore of it, and - in some instances, the mystery behind what it was people saw that made them believe or think as they did.
Like Ghosts or UFO's. I've never seen one, but I'd be curious to have the experience.
Here's an old legend - reported by various sources (none so convincingly recently) - The Jersey Devil. Curious.
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Finally, when all the dust has settled and the 3 minutes wonder has disappeared off the media radar, a few notes.
Compare, first of all, The Rise and Fall of Bin Laden to the theory of the Scapegoat. Notice how what should have been long ago a call to examine and amend US foreign policy turned instead into the launch of several costly occupations and illegal wars.
And maybe challenge yourself with a few slightly more literate and informed views.
1) Michael Moore on the Death of Osama Bin Laden
2) Noam Chomsky on the Death of Osama Bin Laden
No, I don't count Michael Moore amongst the more literate and informed, but he's trying.
In the end, you'll just have to wait for the Disney Version to inform you of what really went on. They might have dropped suit for the trademark, but they're still gunning for the TV show, which should be about as informed as most of what Americans do.
Finally, some quotes from Osama Bin Laden (taken from BrainyQuote)
"We did not find it difficult to deal with Bush and his administration, because it is similar to regimes in our countries - both types include many who are full of arrogance and greed."
"We treat them in the same way. Those who kill our women and innocent, we kill their women and innocent, until they refrain."
"Your security is not in the hands of Kerry, Bush or al-Qaida. Your security is in your own hands."
**Note: The translation is probably considerably less fluid than the original, I'm guessing the translators preserved the literal flow of the quote at the expense of color and poetry.
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"Did he remember the baby alligators? Last year, or maybe the year before, kids all over Nueva York bought these alligators for pets. Macy's was selling them for fifty cents; every child, it seemed, had to have one. But soon the children grew bored with them. Some set them loose in the streets, but most flushed them down the toilets. And these had grown & reproduced, had few of rats & sewage, so that now they moved big, blind, albino, all over the sewer system. Down there, God knew how many there were. Some had turned cannibal because in their neighborhood the rats had all been eaten, or had fled in terror."
- Thomas Pynchon - V
A favorite legend of mine as a child, that there were alligators in NY sewers, and that one day when I grew up I'd go and hunt them.
Of course no one believed me, and even I don't remember how I came by the fact, only that I was ridiculed nonstop for spreading the news.
But you know, you grow up, and I didn't even think to go hunting alligators in NY sewers when I was there last year. Foolish me. But reading my urban legends guidebook I'm inspired again...
Especially by the note:
According to May, sewer inspectors first reported seeing alligators in 1935, but neither May nor anyone else believed them. "Instead, he set men to watch the sewer walkers to find out how they were obtaining whisky down in the pipes." Persistent reports, however, perhaps including the newspaper item discovered by Coleman, caused May to go down to find out for himself. He found that the reports were true. "The beam of his own flashlight had spotted alligators whose length, on the average, was about ten feet."
May started an extermination campaign, using poisoned bait followed by flooding of the side tunnels to flush the beasts out into the major arteries where hunters with .22 rifles were waiting. He announced in 1937 that the 'gators were gone. Reported sightings in 1948 and 1966 were not confirmed.
Read More: Sewer Alligator's on the Wikipedia
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