I began reading E.P. Evans’ classic book The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals at bedtime this week as part of my relatively new interest in animal-human relations in general, but, more specifically, attempts to distinguish humans from other beings in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Imagine my surprise at reading the following in the newspaper this morning:
TheStar.com – World – Bear convicted of stealing honey
March 13, 2008
Reuters
SKOPJE – A Macedonian court convicted a bear of theft and damage for stealing honey from a beekeeper who fought off the attacks with thumping “turbo-folk” music.
“I tried to distract the bear with lights and music because I heard bears are afraid of that,” Zoran Kiseloski told top-selling daily Dnevnik after the yearlong case of the bear versus the beekeeper ended in the beekeeper’s favour.
“So I bought a generator, lit up the area and put on songs of (Serbian “turbo-folk” star) Ceca.”
The bear stayed away for a few weeks, but came back when the generator ran out of power and the music fell silent, Kiseloski said, adding, “it attacked the beehives again.”
A court in the city of Bitola found the bear guilty, and since it had no owner and belonged to a protected species, ordered the state to pay the 140,000 denars ($3,500 U.S.) damage it caused to the hives.
There was no information on the whereabouts of the bear.
Compares favourably, as far as I can tell, with the story Adam found about a man falling nineteen stories while getting change to pay for his taxi.
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