![\"Bullwinkle,](\"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-content\/images\/2009\/01\/moose_051116.jpg\" "\\"Bullwinkle,")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
That’s Bullwinkle, the robot moose.<\/p>\n
No, seriously. A robot moose. <\/p>\n
Apparently the Natural Resources Department here in Nova Scotia uses him to catch people who are illegally trying to bag an endangered species.<\/p>\n
I ran into a story today–admittedly a story from a couple of years back<\/a>–about this, and it just makes me laugh. It’s a short story, but pure gold:<\/p>\n He had been driving with his wife and child when he stopped his car, jumped out, levelled a rifle over the roof, and fired at the fake moose.<\/p>\n Conservation officers were just metres away and arrested him.<\/p>\n In addition to the hunting ban, McLaren must also pay a $4,025 fine, and forfeit his car and rifle.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I mean, as if “robot moose” weren’t already funny enough, you have to picture this hillbilly (he had a rifle in the car, he stopped to shoot a moose over the roof of the car, he’s a hillbilly) as he realizes that rather than serendipitously bagging a forbidden moose, he’s actually fallen into a trap himself.<\/p>\n While that story points out that McLaren (no relation that I know of) was the first to be convicted of attempting to kill and endangered species, a little Googling shows me that Bullwinkle has been catching poachers for longer than that–I guess it was just a different crime. Here’s a bit from a 2006 story<\/a>:<\/p>\n The Langilles were two of eight men charged after conservation officers used the robotic decoy in a sting to nab poachers.<\/p>\n Court was told the men were on their way to a deer hunt on Oct. 29 when they spotted the decoy about 65 metres off Liscomb River Road near New Chester in the District of St. Mary’s.<\/p>\n Defence lawyer Shawn MacLaughlin told the Chronicle-Herald that out of instinct, the two hunters each fired a single shot from their rifles when they spotted the decoy.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n “Out of instinct”… instinct to kill endangered species, I guess. I note that those guys got much bigger fines than McLaren did, so maybe the old offense was more serious than the “attempting to kill and endangered species one”.<\/p>\n I totally know tonight’s dreams are going to include a moose-i-form Terminator that shoots back… while delivering one-liners in a voice that’s half cartoon Bullwinkle, half Arnold.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" That’s Bullwinkle, the robot moose. No, seriously. A robot moose. Apparently the Natural Resources Department here in Nova Scotia uses him to catch people who are illegally trying to bag an endangered species. I ran into a story today–admittedly a story from a couple of years back–about this, and it just makes me laugh. It’s a short story, but pure… Read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[83,176],"class_list":["post-2214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-storytime","tag-benevolent-surrealism","tag-nova-scotia","xfolkentry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5UQvw-zI","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2214"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2214\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2215,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2214\/revisions\/2215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}