Humans vs wild things gets wilder

As fall set in and hunting season has gotten into full swing that old rivalry between man and beasts of the wild is getting into full swing.

The polar wars

Some disputes are expected, like from polar bears, which aren’t anywhere as cute and cuddly as a white teddy bear.

NBCNews.com reported Sept. 13 that five meteorologists conducting research on a remote island high in the Russian Arctic had been trapped in their weather station for two weeks by a gang of polar bears.

The meteorologists had to suspend some of their research because they ran out of flares to chase the bears away and couldn’t shoot the bears because of their protected status. For their part, the bears took full advantage of the situation and started camping out on the station’s front stoop.

The article cites environmental group World Wide Fund for Nature as saying that loss of polar ice habitats has prompted some polar bears to go near human habitats in search of food.

The article goes on to say that the Russian weather bureau was sending a ship on a 1,200-mile trip to the station, hauling a load of small explosives to scare the bears away before they figure out how to open the bear-proof builing to pull the humans out like hotdogs from a plastic wrapper.

The deer of destruction

A surveillance video from earlier in the week shows the latest in many deer attacks on restaurants — see videos online at Youtube.com as proof of the prevalence of these attacks.

Owners of Aspen Cafe in St. John, Indiana, shared with NBCNews.com a surveillance video of a deer crashing through one of the restaurant’s windows this week. The deer proceeded to knock over tables and chairs, streak down an aisle past an employee who was responding to the disturbance and several customers only to escape by leaping through a second window and fleeing the scene.

In unrelated news, Arby’s Restaurant Group Inc. reported this week, also, that 17 Arby’s locations in areas with high deer hunt numbers — including Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Tennessee — are offering a venison steak sandwich for a limited test period in November.

The venison sandwich, a press release says, “features a thick-cut venison steak and crispy onions topped with a juniper berry sauce on a toasted specialty roll. The venison is marinated in garlic, salt and pepper and then cooked for three hours to juicy, tender perfection.”

Things are getting crazy

6NBC.com also reported this week that an airplane landed safely after hitting a deer.

The incident happened in Pennsylvania, one of six states soon to be selling the venison steak sandwich.

A Beechcraft BE58 that had taken off from Wings Field in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania, was able to land at Lancaster Airport at 8:35 a.m., the report said. A portion of the plane’s landing gear fell off when it struck and killed the deer.

With Christmas only a handful of weeks away, FAA authorities have not commented on claims that the animal struck was a deer on the runway, and no official statement has come from the North Pole and the status of the resident flying reindeer.

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Surprisingly, I didn’t make any of this up at [email protected].