you cannot be sciurus...
Two for the price of one.

I went to visit a friend's dad on a tiny Scottish island where he was a gamekeeper. Probably pretty grim in winter, but that spring idyllic beyond belief; stags swimming across the bay, seals and dolphins popping up from time to time, sightings of whales, the odd eagle and the entire place festooned with erupting pink and purple rhododendrons.

any way, friend's dad met us at the boat and walked us to his little cottage (croft?), crinkled roof, blue smoke etc. and, to my amazement, called down two crows from the eves which landed on his shoulders and bobbed about like satanic parrots.

The guy was a forester who took in and had a knack of taming lost baby animals (viz the crows). He was even more proud of the red squirrel he'd found as an orphan... his eyes softened as he told us how it would spring out of the trees and ride with him in his land rover, sitting on the dashboard as he swatted mozzies, and sit in the pocket of his jacket. I was completely enthralled, and asked to see it.

Um... he'd opened the door to the land rover one day, realised he'd forgotten something, and stepped back to go get it, only to find that the little red squirrel had bounced down from the trees, about to leap up into the car, only to be squished by a size 10 boot.

Don't try to maintain eye contact with a grown man welling up in tears when you feel you're about to explode laughing.

Also, my girlfriend's father was out cutting hay in the meadow when his (somewhat arthritic) spaniel tried to leap into the cab of the tractor (as had been his habit for some ten years).

Sadly, his 'spring' left him that day, as he missed his cab and sailed, with a final, loyal wag, headfirst into the silage cutter...

BTW, I know he lived on a tiny island. I assume he kept the land rover on shore.
(pounana Slept well, and dreamed of large women, on, Wed 12 Dec 2007, 10:22, 2 replies)

And now for something completely different...
It was a typical hot and dry summer’s day, the type of which are so precious to an Englishman beset by depressions rolling in from the Atlantic. I decided to make the most of the balmy afternoon by reading my book, The life of Pi (excellent) and possibly snoozing in my parent’s conservatory.

Once I was settled in a near horizontal position I became aware of a weak, intermittent buzzing sound coming from the corner of the room. I peeled myself off the sofa to investigate and there bumping forlornly in the window was a big fat bumble bee. It was literally on it’s last legs; they say bumble bees shouldn’t technically be able to fly, but this one really couldn’t.

I gently scooped it up with a piece of paper a offered it an open window. But it was too late, the poor little might hardly had the strength to stand and she slipped from the paper towards the cruel cold slate floor. I somehow managed to drop to my knees and catch her in my hand, all sense of self preservation gone. She didn’t sting me. Whether this was because she was too tired or because she knew I was trying to help I’ll never know.

As her movements slowed I felt her life slowly ebbing away. I was running out of ideas. Then it came to me! Most insects have incredibly high metabolisms if I can just get her to feed maybe she’ll survive. I rushed to the kitchen a grabbed a saucer, a pot of honey and mixed up a hot water and honey mix in the saucer. I gently placed the bee on the side of the saucer, where she sat motionless. It was too late exhaustion had killed her.

But no! Suddenly her proboscis slowly unfurled and started to lap at the sweet nourishing honey. Over the next few minutes her feeding became faster, until she actually started to flap her delicate wings. Quickly I rushed the saucer outside where after several false starts she lifted woozily into the air and bumbled off down the garden.

I hope she went back to her hive and told all of her bumble babies that not all people are cruel and unkind and that they shouldn’t sting people but should just try and look pretty flying between summer flowers for all to enjoy.

Many would say it was just a bumble bee, but I can’t tell you how I felt when she flew away, it was a little bit of happiness in a cold world and deep down inside me I knew I had done a small but good thing.
( Naked Ape call me Caitlyn, Wed 12 Dec 2007, 9:17, 9 replies)

I was feeding the ducks
It was spring time, and there were lots of very small and fwuffy ducklings in the river, but the bigger ducks kept getting all the bread - the ducklings didn't stand a chance.

I thought I'd be kind to the wittle fwuffy ducklings and only throw the bread near to them, which worked fine for about 5 seconds, until a big fucker of a drake came and started to beat the crap out of them. I watched in horror as it shook them around in its beak and held them under water. I had no idea big ducks could be so mean to little ducks.

I don't feed the ducks any more, as the event keeps resurfacing in my therapy sessions.
(se8card, Wed 12 Dec 2007, 7:31, 2 replies)

I once ate some 'baccy...
...for a bet.

I pocketed my 1,000 baht, and thought nothing of it for a couple of days. Until I passed the mother of all tape worms while taking my morning shit.

Yep, I'd unintentionally killed the tape worm I didn't even know I was lovingly taking care of in my abundant gut.

Length, about two meters. The tape worm was quite big as well.
( The Awful Puppy Bakery is still bored, Wed 12 Dec 2007, 4:16, 4 replies)

Does it count if it's mutuall?
Back in the day we found a stray rabbit outside that we named Dusty, I have never known an animal this vicious, it hated every second it existed in our house and regularly attacked the feet of anyone stupid enough to come close to it. We just let it go eventually, kind of hope it was run over to be honest, that thing nearly gnawed off one of my toenails.
( Arsonade is saving up for a new box of hummus, Wed 12 Dec 2007, 3:56, Reply)

Pigeon was pecking
around in the road. Me and my sis walk by and she mentions the pigeon to me. I just look and shrug.

A car comes and really breaks the pigeon up.

I could have done something.
(Waspard has your wank bank account details, Wed 12 Dec 2007, 2:48, Reply)

Maid Oi Laff....
Mate of mine & his brother had a pet terrapin when they were young. They were forbidden to get it out of it's tank to play with it: "It's not a toy, it's one of God's creatures" etc.
M & D went out to visit a sick reli' or somesuch (back in the days when you could leave the kids alone for an hour & not find them in the care of Social Services/ Portugese child abducters).
Malc & Kev, for that was their names, duly took said terrapin out to play with on the lounge floor.
Parents returned unexpectedly, causing young Kev to panic & run around, sadly treading the terrapin into the shagpile... oops!
Malc picks up squished dead Chelonian, still surprisingly intact, and places it back on it's log in the tank.
Innocence reigns supreme...
It's a couple of days later before the demise is noticed by Mum & it's here that the story bifurcates, depending on which brother you believe.
One says that they had to pretend that they were distraught at the sad but natural passing away of their beloved turtle.
The other says that miraculously it returned to life thanks to Mum purchasing a replacement, so as not to upset them. After all, one bloody water tortoise (albeit a bit flatter than normal) looks much the same as another...
Funny thing is, whichever version you believe, they never told Mum...
...hope she's a B3tard!
Not so much about length as height in this case.
(stygof, Wed 12 Dec 2007, 1:00, Reply)

Gerbils gerbils gerbils
For her 9th birthday my sister was taken down to the pet store and allowed to choose two gerbils. She picked a couple of young hyperactive female gerbils, both born to the same mother.

When we got home she put them in a tank and let them acclimatise to their new surroundings for a bit. Once they seemed to have accepted their fate – to live out their remaining days as a couple of celibate gerbil spinsters in a glass-sided prison – my sister was keen to play with them. We had previously kept mice and used to let them run over our hands. What we didn't know was that gerbils are more like small kangaroos than mice. So as soon as my sister picked up one of the gerbils to take it for a test-drive, it instantly lept from her hands and landed face first on the hard wooden floor below. It lay there twitching grotesquely in the afternoon sunlight.

Desperately praying that the creature was not too badly hurt and simply in an advanced state of shock, my sister gingerly scooped it off the floor and put it back in the habitat. The other gerbil was visibly petrified at the sight of its hideously contorted sister, and hid in the neon plastic hidey-house in the corner of the tank.

The next day we discovered that what had once been an injured twitching gerbil was now a dead motionless gerbil, and it was duly stuffed arse-first into a Silk Cut box and buried in the garden in a small but somber ceremony.

The story does not end there, however, because about two days passed and the other gerbil still hadn't set foot outside its little plastic house in the corner of the tank. More time passed and my sister, now deeply distressed, eventually decided to pull the roof off the neon plastic hidey-house to reveal... TA DA! another dead gerbil!

Our mother sensitively suggested that "it probably died of a broken heart".

Silk Cut. Garden. Tears.

In an effort to console my sister my mother went out and bought her yet another gerbil. The last remaining female gerbil from the same litter, incidentally. The last of the gerbil sisters lived for about six months, was named Twinkle and died when my sister forgot to refill its water bottle.
(Japes, Wed 12 Dec 2007, 0:52, Reply)

My lovely goldfish
Mr Bigglesworth, has lived to the ripe old age of 10, and is still with us. For the first nine years of his life he lived in the porch, first with Mr Bendyfish, his esteemed colleague (who got his name when his tail began to bend upwards at a 45-degree angle towards the end of his life). After this, he moved to temporary accommodation with us, and then to his new home. Unaccustomed as he was to regular human contact, he quickly got used to people milling around him and stroking his tank (he likes this).

So much so, that I now have an attention whore fish, who will pick up one of the bright blue pebbles from the bottom of his tank and throw it at the glass when he feels lonely. This backfired on him the other week when he nearly swallowed one and my dad apparently nearly had to perform fishy CPR.

Long live Mr B.
( Maladicta, Wed 12 Dec 2007, 0:50, 2 replies)

Oh, I just thought of another one
When I was about 9, my friend and I went out searching for slugs in the garden after a particularly rainy afternoon.

I know what you're thinking. Salt, right? Naturally... but we'd already done that so many times, so decided to spice things up a little.

We picked up a slug - with twigs.. didn't want to touch the slimy thing. Put it on an old plate, and took it indoors.

We covered the plate with a smaller plate - made of glass, so as to form a protective compartment - and put the ensemble in the microwave.

SPLANG!

It's a good thing we thought to cover the slug, otherwise the microwave would have been rendered less than usable in the future.

Ahh.. fun times.
(EuroSong I love horse meat: best of all the animals, Wed 12 Dec 2007, 0:26, 3 replies)

glue ear
I don't know why my Mike always brings marijuhana to our parties. None of us smoke it and he hardly ever gets to smoke it either. He usually ends up taking it home with him. Except last new year - returning home hammered from the pub he decided that he was taking our puppy to bed with him because it would get cold downstairs, the big soppy git. Anyway, he nods off into a drunken stupor, and wakes to find that the dog has slept well in his company. not only that but he has breakfasted on the contents of his stash tin. Mike awoke to find our puppy with an enormous wood on, latched onto his head and fucking his ear just as hard as he can.

Puppy calmed down a bit when he'd finished and was very mongy for a day or so. Cruelty? ask Mike's ear.
(Jack Rarebit ...We like chillies, Tue 11 Dec 2007, 23:58, Reply)

i had a friend
who got a gerbil. knowing, as some of you have found out for yourselves, that their tails can drop off if you don't handle them carefully, I told him that, like lizards, gerbils also possessed the incredible ability of regeneration.

Thinking this was there "BEST THING EVAAAAA!" he dutifully yanked at his poor gerbils tail until it gave up and parted from its owner leaving an ugly bloody streak in its wake.

The tail never grew back, and I don't think either of them ever forgave me :(
(Roopy all is not what it seams, Tue 11 Dec 2007, 23:56, Reply)

friend of a friends story (with anal sex thrown in)
this friend of a friend (my friend was technicaly leigh linley, dunno the "of a friend" as it were) decided he would quite like to do his bird up the shitter. she agreed, so he did. on the living room sofa.

there followed an unfortunate accident involving said shitter when the young lady became "too relaxed".

endearing mental image isnt it.

anyway, friend of a friend tries to clean this up before his parents, who had been away for some reason, came back.

he managed to get rid of the stain, but not the smell.

His parents come back, take one breath of the putrid air and are aghast.

What has happened here? they ask, fingers firmly clenched around their noses.

friend of a friend panics, and tells them the dog had had the runs all over the sofa one evening.

He comes in the next day from work/school/wherever to a dogless house.

His parents had had the poor hound put down due to having a low anal shutter speed to paraphrase family guy.

classic accidental animal cruelty
(harestylenumber1 loves weiner, Tue 11 Dec 2007, 23:46, 3 replies)

Have A Poem
.
Little fly, all alone
Got no mother,got no home
Got no place to lay your head
BANG! You bastard, now you're dead
( Legless Mister Stabby - shanks for the memory, Tue 11 Dec 2007, 23:41, Reply)

gerbils
I thought the pet shop lady said "ALWAYS" pick the gerbil up by their tail not "NEVER". It snapped off mid air, gerbil fell, I squealed and dropped the stump which another gerbil ran over to and started to eat
(trumpy use a fan to spread your wind, Tue 11 Dec 2007, 23:37, Reply)

Poor kitty
Once I was really sick and staying home from school. My cat, Milo, started meowing to go out. I let him out, but accidentally closed the door on his tail.

And then I found five dollars.
(I bape rabies Let's go get Chick-fi-A!, Tue 11 Dec 2007, 23:04, Reply)

wasps
one night, i woke up to a strange buzzing noise and the feeling that the air was moving around in front of me. i put this down to having just woken up and stared blearily at the ceiling until i realised that there were actually hundreds of little black shapes flying about, buzzing. i legged it to the other end of the room and turned on the light.

as it turned out, an entire army of wasp's had found their own nest too cold that night and had decided my lampshade would be the perfect refuge.

at first, i tried booting a load of them with a book. i got about forty. then, when they kept coming, i dared to stand underneath my lampshade and peer inside. it was indeed an entire waspish army. tearfully, i picked up my duvet and went down to sleep on the sofa, unkeen to be stung and aware that id never be able to kill all of them by morning. when i was discovered in the morning, shivering on the cold leather sofa, the wasps had all disappeared.

id been forced to evacuate my room by waspy fiends. but, i did manage to not swallow any AND i did kill a lot of them. i took a photo of the woeful pile of squashed bodies the next morning but i cant find it.
(ladyintheradiator, Tue 11 Dec 2007, 23:01, Reply)

Baby birds
I accidently injured a couple of baby birds whilst retreiving a football. Bascally, what happened is that when I was about 13, I was having a kick around when the ball went into some bushes. I nominated to get it so started hacking away at said bushes.

Anyway, after about a minute or so of hacking I heard a couple of birds squeling like mad. I looked in the direction of the squeling (which just so happened to be on the floor between some bushes I had just crushed) to be presented with three baby birds. One dead, and two badly injured. The two injured ones appeared to have a variety of injuries including a missing wing.

Did I stop to put them out of their misery? Did I hell. I scarpered. I was scared that the mother would hear their baby's squawking for help and would return, only to see me interfering with her nest thus leaving her with no option but to attack my eyes!

Length? It was about 50 meters to my front door.
(Clivicus, Tue 11 Dec 2007, 22:22, Reply)

Brooms.
We used to have pet rats. (Nice and clean.)
They were afraid of the broom.
So we'd sweep them up.


Be gentle...
(CakeCat, Tue 11 Dec 2007, 21:52, Reply)

Cruelty to a dog
I think it's awful how they tastelessly dressed this ageing poodle and made it dance and sing in front of all those baying sailors.
( abefroman skating on the thin life of modern life on, Tue 11 Dec 2007, 21:44, 3 replies)

Collar
Our cat - well, her cat - has been letting in another cat who eats our cat's food. Not good.

So, we put a collar on our cat - One of those magnetic ones that opens the cat flap.

All good.

Cat freaks out - runs around the house, hides, not happy with the collar - well, the cat is 6 years old after all....

Anyway, cat sleeps on the bed that night and is clearly distressed - and vomits on the bed. Great.

Cat's still not happy and the other cat's still getting in somehow - but I'm leaving the collar on the cat though as it is working to an extent...

Sorry for the shit posts y'all, but I'm thin on these stories....

I've missed posting on here, I really have!
(james_tiger_woods is going to start his killing spree on the, Tue 11 Dec 2007, 21:10, Reply)

best mates dog
when me n a mate discovered weed we became more interested in how to take it, so my mate found this crapy lil recipe off the net that used like; egg, oats and hash. soo we make these lil cookies and they taste like absolute crap so we just drop them on the floor, the dog sees this and imediatly hoovers them up.....she didnt get up for about 6 hours...oops

another time i had gone with the same mate to a club we had taken a magical white powder that makes crap music sound gd and ...is....used to tranqulize horses. we had sum left over so we took it in the morning. so we sit down completely out of our heads wen the dog comes up and starts licking my hand i thought this was really funny till she slumped to the floor, and then realising i had given horse tranqulizer to a dog! didnt get up for a while again but hey she survived and everyones happy right?
(kristofski6992, Tue 11 Dec 2007, 20:44, Reply)

i've only had my cat for a week
so i've had no time to be cruel to her, intentionally or otherwise.
however, if she yowls outside my bedroom window at 6a.m ONE MORE FUCKING TIME i may well have another story for you.

if she shits on the side of the litterbox again, she's getting put out all night. it's nasty.
( Smash Monkey lowering the tone of the whole internet, Tue 11 Dec 2007, 20:25, Reply)

Dukecat needs more cowbell...
I was a bastard.

I was a bastard at the tender age of three.
My aunt's big cuddly cat Marmaduke [RIP ginger] was my favourite toy. Nothing harmful, really, but...

I also had one of these old tin buckets. Or rather, my aunt did. It was actually a waste paper bucket, making it even worse. :s

You can guess what happens next. Baby Fighting Comet. Ginger tom. Bucket. Oh, and a stick.

That's right. I trapped poor old Marmaduke under this bucket and banged it hard repeatedly. :( Poor dear Marmaduke. Poor catbell. Bad Comet.
(FightingComet got Boost Power on, Tue 11 Dec 2007, 20:15, Reply)

Nelson
A number of years ago, we used to have a fishtank on our landing containing three fish. One was massive ('Goliath'), one fat and silly looking ('Spotty'), and one boring one ('Coral'). As with all childhood pets, by the first week they had lost all of their somewhat limited novelty, and from then on it was my reluctant father's job to maintain their upkeep.

Now, when changing the water in a fishtank, the best way to do it is to use a long length of plastic piping and an alternative container, placed below the level of the fishtank. (This may well be a technique all you home-brewers out there are familiar with!). You briefly, but powerfully, suck on the tubing, and then allow the laws of physics to deposit the water from the fishtank into the container. Naturally, this creates quite a powerful sucking force inside the fishtank. As Dad was only changing about half of the water to maintain its cleanliness, as the tank had a water-filter anyway, he didn't bother to remove the three fish from the tank - they were extremely elusive when it came to catching them and, after all, he was only changing a little of the water. Anyway, just as Dad was initially sucking on the tube to create such a force, a curious Goliath swims up to the end of the tube

Pop.

I've never seen my Dad move so bloody fast. Why? He was avoiding the fish-eye that had just been sucked from Goliath's body, and was winging its way in the direction of his gob.

The eye came clean away into the tube, gushed through it with the water and plopped into the bucket with all of the excess liquid. Fish is meanwhile thrashing in clear agony in the tank, looking distressed and bewildered (well, as distressed and bewildered as a goldfish can.) The fish survived, would you believe it, and led a very happy life with its remaining eye in the tank - bloody thing lived for about 8 years, in fact. Needless to say, from then on Dad used the humble 'jug' method to empty the fishtank... and we changed the fish's name.

Length? About 2mm!
(paisleypiglet, Tue 11 Dec 2007, 20:02, 1 reply)

A Pearost im afriad...
My beloved parents had just woken up, mother had scuttled off downstairs to do whatever it is mothers do in the morning, leaving my father to lift himself out of bed, forklift-esq style.

The cat (pure white, stupid animal) decided on this fateful day to go and say hello.

By this time my father had pulled himself out of bed and started to walk around it, so the cat decided to go and wish him good morning - by smelling his behind (you know, as cat's do)...

My father lovingly stops, bends over a little, the cat then decides to take this prime opportunity to take a great big sniff *just* as my father lets one go, a big, smelly, one-you-could-eat type.

The look of revolt, pure horror and general "That was a bad idea" look on the cat's face shall never leave me, aswell as my fathers amusement when i told him what had just happened. (He hadn't done it intentionally!).

The cat is dead now, but he was the most awesome cat... when i was three (apparently) i used to stick the washing basket over him and pretend he was playing hide and seek.

I was a bastard.

The cat has never been the same again, oh how i laughed!
( Axai is in Montréal, Canada O.o, Tue 11 Dec 2007, 17:23, Reply)

people from Devon are wierd*

I have a friend from Devon, worse than that he grew up on a farm in Devon and therefore was very much used to the lifecycle of animals.

Anyway, they used to play a drinking game down in the darkest depths of Devon that involved whiskey and tiny little fishes.

Put simply if you lost a round a fish goes in a double of whiskey and said fishy alcool goes in the players stomach. A wee bit cruel admitedly.

Star wipe to the end of a very drunken night at Uni, three chaps and a couple of lasses return home to the damp slug infested palace that we called home. Much banter, joshing and joviality ensues until farmer boys decides to show off.

We had a fish called Dave Neville (couldn't agree on one name) he was about the size of a small tangerine and farmer boy decided he was going to swallow him.

As was previously mentioned this game normally involved fish about the length of the top of your thumb. Dave was significantly bigger and wasn't going to go down without a fight, that is until he was bitten in half and chewed a little bit.

Every last morsal disappeared and Dave Neville was no more.

*I love Devon and it's people, some are however slightly off centre.

EDIT: The fish really only had a couple of days to live as he was very old and quite a bit shit.
( Naked Ape call me Caitlyn, Tue 11 Dec 2007, 17:06, 1 reply)