Animal April Fool's

Most of the animal-themed April Fool's jokes this year play on   our overwhelming desire to befriend, understand and get close to our animals.

Michigan's State-Sponsored Canned Deer Hunts
The Detroit Free Press was the boldest and funniest, with a plan to corral Michigan's 1.7 million deer and allow canned hunts in an effort to prevent bovine tuberculosis. "Hunters could drive to any of the eight or 10 state deer ranches after breakfast -- no more need to get up before dawn -- and be in a stand by noon. It shouldn't take more than an hour to shoot the deer and get home in time to watch the football game," a bogus biologist said. State financial crisis? Solved!



Google Translate for Animals
Google gave us a bit of wish fulfillment with Google Translate for Animals, which comes just its only marginally less amazing program to translate a ton of human languages. Hold your Google Android up to an animal and finally get to understand what they're saying. Their demonstration animals were all mushy, only offering compliments and affection. I'd have liked to see more opinionated animals, critiquing outfits, their food, their human handlers.

Montana State Flower
An outdoors writer for the Billings Gazette wrote about a  proposal to recycle all those obsolete, giant satellite dishes at camp sites, providing both shade and some controversial outdoor television enterntainment.

Nanaimo Non-Mermaid
The poor folks at the Nanaimo News on Vancouver Island no longer have a prank story about a mermaid sighting on their website. All they have is this pathetic explanation "for those who missed the clues" that wends its way to the serious point behind it all..."pollution is no laughing matter"...blah, blah, blah. This kind of thing--along with all the other hacky, humorless stories out today bemoaning that offshore oil drilling or whatever sounds like an April Fool's joke but it's serious--is exactly what gives animal lovers and environmentalists a bad name.

Who's Your Emperor Now, Mr. Penguin?
Animals make a natural subject for April Fool's Day pranks. Or so says the Museum of Hoaxes, a hoax authority quoted by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, though they count such innanities as calling the zoo and asking for Mr. Lion and such. Occassionally a prankster will hoax an animal, like Tokyo Ueno Zoo did in 2005, putting human emperor penguins in their place with a human-sized overlord.



Where to Go to See Weird Animals

Easter Bunny Will Leave Eggs At Wolf Park--Then Quickly Leave The Enclosure

Kailani finds goodies in an old stump.  Monty Sloan/ Wolfpark.org

The Easter Bunny visits Indiana's Wolf Park this weekend, but don't worry about his personal safety.
The park assures visitors "The Easter Bunny will hop into the wolf enclosure (the wolves will be elsewhere) and will hide Easter eggs for the wolves to find (after the Bunny leaves)." Whew!

The non-profit, educational park is really clever in coming up with events that both keep wolves busy and gently persuade the public to enjoy wolves instead of fearing them. They recently had a Twilight event, give the wolves pumpkins at Halloween, have a communal birthday party (all the wolves are born around the same time) and have overnight kids camps.

Volunteer Caity did let us in on an Easter secret: the wolves prefer other treats to the traditional colored hard-boiled eggs (just like people!). Wolves go for peeps and sausages. "The eggs are not necessarily their favorites, but they do look really cute," Caity says. The wolves catch onto the game right away. "They're very inquisitive," she says. "Some are braver than others when it comes to exploring new items, but they all  pretty quickly notice it is food."

The event, now in its eighth year, also includes Easter egg hunts for kids--no sausage included.

	Where to Go To See Wolves
See More Animals in the Midwest

Happy Squirrel Awareness Day: Where You Can Find Unusual Squirrels

Today is officially Squirrel Appreciation Day. I don't know what else I can do for the family of squirrels that frequents my window sill and fire escape. "Mommy Squirrel"--named because she was lactating last summer--will put her paws on the window to demand chestnuts if I only have out peanuts and sunflowers. These New Yorkers also have South Carolina acorns (bought in bulk on eBay) and apple cores on the menu.

HuffPo has a list of suggested activities, including looking for TV shows. Thanks to my lousy Time-Warner DVR, I can't even do that. There are plenty of places that have specialty squirrels around the country that you can visit: the Grand Canyon has black and white Kaibab squirrels, Maine has chatty red squirrels and plenty of towns boast the title of White Squirrel Capital.

As a made up animal holidays go, it sure beats yesterday's far more theoretical Penguin Awareness Day.