The past few days have been very active with animal-related stories from around the world:

• An animal rights activist from Ukraine is protesting poor living conditions for zoo animals, living in the lions' den for five weeks to raise money for them.
• A pair of cougars have been shot after they began attacking humans in Alberta.
• Ukraine's government has vowed to end a sickening local tradition of animal abuse.
• An Idaho man is in hot water after prancing around in a bunny suit.
• A truck carrying bees has flipped and closed a major highway near Edmonton, Alberta.

Swedish newspaper Gotebors-Posten reports that police fired shots at a person wearing a costume, who held up a bank in a large shopping center in the city of Gothenberg late Friday.

A witness told G-P that:

A man in a monkey outfit, or similar, may have been a bear too, came running with security guards behind him. I thought it was a joke at first, a stunt, but then I walked past the bank and saw the shattered glass.

A burning car was discovered by police near the crime scene about an hour after the robbery. Investigations for the unusually-attired suspect are continuing, but he outran the officers at the scene and no arrests have yet been made. [via The Sydney Herald Sun]

Police were called to Kimbrough Middle School in Mesquite, Texas, after a squirrel was seen behaving erratically. The concern was that this can be a sign of rabies.

As a baby squirrel hopped towards a policeman in the grounds of a school, he took out his pepper spray, apparently to defend himself against the potentially infected animal. As school children pleaded with the officer not to harm the creature, the squirrel advanced and the man reacted by spraying it. The squirrel became disorientated and started writhing on the ground.

A Mesquite Animal Control officer was called and cleaned the spray off the squirrel. After being given a satisfactory bill of health, it was released back into the wild.

A video recording of the pepper-spraying incident, made by students, generated outrage after it was posting on YouTube. Having received over 700,000 views in one week, comments on the video are split between those condemning the officer's actions as heavy-handed, and those sympathising with his need to maintain personal safety in the face of a possibly rabid animal.

For the past few weeks, deputies at the Oklahoma Sheriff's Office have found their vehicles being vandalised, with tampering to the electrical wiring.

Closer examination revealed the wiring had been chewed through, with the culprit leaving a mass of tiny footprints in the engine compartment. Deputies have since observed a squirrel dropping down from under one of the vehicles, which showed signs of recent squirrel habitation, and have called in animal control. So far, attempts to trap the vandal squirrel have failed.

In a sign of the times, the Scofflaw Squirrel now has a Twitter account.

Police know drug users, dealers, and traffickers use elaborate methods of protecting and concealing their illegal goods, but this one is a first in Canada: thirteen black bears, found by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police at a marijuana plantation in Christina Lake, British Columbia (near the US-Canada border).

The bears were apparently trained to guard two fields of marijuana plants and fed to become docile and trainable, defending the hidden plantation containing over 2300 plants.  The closest past parallel was police finding a two-meter (six-foot) crocodile at a grow-op in 2003.

Read more at WDIV-DT - ClickOnDetroit.com and The Windsor Star.

Apparently to hand out tickets.
Here’s a quick little story about resource mismanagement courtesy of Fox News. In sunny Glendale, California the police reportedly used a bunny costume to track down reckless drivers. They also report that a city counsel man was hopping mad.

Editor's note: A more extensive story with a photograph is at the Glendale News Press.

A new FBI-style crime-fighting agency has been launched in the UK, but what's its big cat logo all about?

If you're launching yourself as Britain's FBI and say you will make the lives of organised criminals "hell" then you need a dynamic logo to match the job.

Read more here

An exuberant dog left in a truck while the owner watched Canada win the World Cup of Hockey managed to throw the vehicle into gear and coast down a city hill. A man out for a walk called police after seeing the vehicle coast by with a black Labrador retriever behind the wheel.

[Read Article]

OSLO, Norway - When Varg the police dog was sent into a candy factory to track down two intruders, his sense of taste got the better of his sense of duty. The German Shepherd nearly ate himself sick.

Full Story

Russian police battling fish smugglers have deployed a cat to sniff out contraband, including Caspian Sea sturgeon which produce Russia's world famous caviar.

Read the article here

COOKEVILLE, Tennessee (CNN) -- Police video released Wednesday showed a North Carolina family kneeling and handcuffed, who shrieked as officers killed their dog -- which appeared to be playfully wagging its tail -- with a shotgun during a traffic stop.

See the rest of the article here: http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/01/08/police.kill.dog/index.html

Just when you thought all squirrels were good for is stashing peanuts and acting silly, Ananova reports about one who helped the cops at a burglary scene.

LA police use non-uniformed officers in sting operations to catch speeding motorists... but decided do go one better than just not wearing their uniforms.

Read the story here.

Lets have more fursuited policing! :-)

On Saturday, a cow broke free of its slaughterhouse pen, somehow climbed an eight foot fence, and has eluded Cincinnati police since that time. They've used night scopes, helicopter surveillance, and thermal imaging, but to no avail. The cow has even foiled traps set around the city, taking the bait and running.

In the effort to fight terrorism, Punxsutawney Phil, the groundhog of Groundhog's Day, is getting

bomb-sniffing dogs, state police, and National Guard troops

to protect him. All bags will be searched; all visitors will be inspected; and no cars may approach Gobbler's Knob (the site) on that day.