Animals in the Wrong Places and Doing Things They Shouldn’t Do

Ever since I saw the story that police recovered a sculptured bust of Jim Morrison that had been stolen from his Paris grave, I’ve been excited for this month’s Strange Security. I had my headline ready to go: “Jim Morrison Returns! …At Least His Bust Does.” There was even a complementary strange security story on a sculpture of Melania Trump stolen from her hometown in Slovenia.

Alas, those kooky denizens from the animal kingdom and their security-adjacent news stories stole the show in May. So, with the standard caveat that security is serious, and we don’t want to diminish the harm these stories may have caused, here are examples of animals in the wrong place and doing things they shouldn’t do.

Snake Causes Train Disruption in Japan: You want this to be a real, live Snakes on a Train don't you? I do, too, but it is not. It is, however, the story of how one snake, tangled in power lines, can delay Japan’s famed bullet trains for nearly two hours. The article does not have this detail, but presumably the story ended badly for the snake.

An Elephant Seal Takes a Wrong Turn and Heads Down a Street: No, this is not the start of a joke. This is the story of a very large sea mammal “galumphing” (picture-perfect verb is from the caption of the story’s photo) around a coastal suburb of Cape Town, South Africa. The fate of the elephant seal was decidedly better than the snake, but take a look at that photo: How would you like to be the animal control officer charged with getting that two-ton beast back to the bay?

When Is a Cat a Mule? This riddle is brought to you by the prison guards at the Pococi Penitentiary in Costa Rica. They discovered a feline in an open area of the prison with 235 grams of weed and 67 grams of heroin strapped to its body; thus, someone was using the kitty as a drug mule.

That Dog Was Caught Red-Handed: Chinese police gave a stern rebuke to Fuzai, reportedly the first Corgi to land a job as a police dog. When on patrol, the overzealous canine took a sausage right out of the hand of a toddler. The article comes complete with a video showing the officers performing enhanced training after the incident, but to no avail. For Fuzai, sausages are just too tempting.

That Cat Assaulted Me: Of course it did, that's what cats do! But one cat dressed in a “cute pink harness” was expressing her cattiness to the wrong people in Bangkok, Thailand: She—we have to say “allegedly” because this is a crime report after all—allegedly bit and scratched several police officers. The cat was “charged with assaulting police officers and is about to be detained.” Yes, they even finger paw-printed the feline.

In other strange security news our editors saw in the last month:

There were more animals in wrong places, like pigeons on a plane (or should that be Pigeons on a Plane!?) and bees on the loose in Washington state (the writer had a blast with this story, noting the “A.P. Bee” for “250 million fugitives”).

As with Morrison, there were long-missing things making their return, like a 1972 Soviet spacecraft. As with Melania, some strange thefts occurred, like a temporary “home run” fence installed for a softball tournament.

And May, of course, brings us 4 May, aka May the Fourth, aka Jedi Day, so it’s fitting we end with Star Wars-related strange security news: Natalie Portman confessed to stealing a prop braid used by the Anakin Skywalker character. Not bizarre enough for you? Okay, how about this story about how the CIA set up a fake Star Wars fan site that it used to send messages to operatives?