Hello everybody and welcome to the April edition of Digging Up Positivity! This episode is filled to the brink with charity events and fundraisers. And now that most of the world is slowly opening up again, the urge to go out and have fun again is real with many of us! When I visited some of them, like Elfia, it was like a reunion from a long lost time, and many conversations went like this [scene from the Witcher]:

I haven't seen you since the plague.

But besides new events, charities and just plain old outside fun, recently a new furry social network has been rapidly growing: Barq. And this social network has been founded by a Dutch Fur, Woutske, who is our featurette of this month, but now, without further ado: The charities.

Do you read German? I don’t.

I have been occasionally checking to see whether any more of the German murder mysteries featuring animal private detectives have been translated into English. Sadly, all we’ve gotten is three of Akif Pirinçci’s eight hard-boiled cat murder mysteries (Felidae and two of its sequels featuring Francis – you’ve probably seen the German “Felidae” animated feature), and the first of Leonie Swann’s Agatha Christie-like sheep murder mysteries (“Three Bags Full” featuring Miss Maple, the cleverest sheep in Glenkill, maybe in all Ireland, maybe in the world). There have not been any translations of the murder mysteries investigated by dog detectives, pig detectives, goose detectives, parrot detectives, and more. Now it looks like the series by Moritz Matthies starring Ray and Rufus, the meerkat detectives from the Berlin Zoo, has reached its final volume with “Letzte Runde” (“Last Round”) from Fischer Verlag (March 2017, 304 pages).

John Will Balsley is a cartoon artist with a distinctly “loose” style of design.  He shows off his drawing talents on his web site, where he’s created several rather-adult-leaning graphic stories with titles like The Devil’s Henchmen and Taboose the Meerka.  Many of these feature various critters who are collectively referred to as The Roofles.  Makes more sense if you look at it… or, maybe not.

image c. 2015 by JW Balsley

The 12th Meerkat Manor dance and Disneyland Paris Halloween 2011 trip, organized by Timduru, took place last weekend. The latter had 60 planned attendees from nine countries.

The fursuiters were reportedly asked to leave the park for 30 minutes after stealing the show from the Disney character performers. [video: Djem; tip: Pegla]

See more: Video and photos and reports from prior Halloween trips.

Long story short – Animals United (trailer) is a crappily-written CGI movie. Avoid it.

Researchers studying meerkats have found different groups follow different traditions that are passed on non-genetically. They noticed that different meerkat groups wake up at different times, and that immigrants adjust to the group's traditional waking hour.

Read more: Multi-generational persistence of traditions in neighbouring meerkat groups