LA_MERC_Yankee
January 15th, 2003, 07:42 PM
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<img src="http://i.cnn.net/cnn/2003/WORLD/europe/01/15/offbeat.drunk.birds.ap/story.bird.jpg" alt="" width="220" height="168" border="0" hspace="0" vspace="0" align="top">
<b style="font-size:14px">STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) --</b> <b style="font-size:14px">Thousands of drunks are smashing into windows at Karlstad University, but it isn't students blowing off steam.</b>
Instead, birds feasting on fermented berries are getting drunk and playing chicken with the glass.
Thousands of waxwings began gathering in the trees outside the university late last week to feast on ripening rowanberries. The birds haven't learned to say when.
"So far some 50 drunk birds have lost their lives when crashing into the university's big windows," University spokesman Hans Jensen said. "But the worst is over, the berries are beginning to run out."
None of the windows at the university 140 miles west of the capital have been broken.
It's not the first time that birds and beasts have become inebriated in this Scandinavian country of 8.9 million.
In December, police in Karlskoga in central Sweden had to kill an intoxicated big-horned elk after it charged an 8-year-old boy.
The elk got drunk by munching on fallen alcohol-filled apples that fermented on the ground.
:cheers
<img src="http://i.cnn.net/cnn/2003/WORLD/europe/01/15/offbeat.drunk.birds.ap/story.bird.jpg" alt="" width="220" height="168" border="0" hspace="0" vspace="0" align="top">
<b style="font-size:14px">STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) --</b> <b style="font-size:14px">Thousands of drunks are smashing into windows at Karlstad University, but it isn't students blowing off steam.</b>
Instead, birds feasting on fermented berries are getting drunk and playing chicken with the glass.
Thousands of waxwings began gathering in the trees outside the university late last week to feast on ripening rowanberries. The birds haven't learned to say when.
"So far some 50 drunk birds have lost their lives when crashing into the university's big windows," University spokesman Hans Jensen said. "But the worst is over, the berries are beginning to run out."
None of the windows at the university 140 miles west of the capital have been broken.
It's not the first time that birds and beasts have become inebriated in this Scandinavian country of 8.9 million.
In December, police in Karlskoga in central Sweden had to kill an intoxicated big-horned elk after it charged an 8-year-old boy.
The elk got drunk by munching on fallen alcohol-filled apples that fermented on the ground.
:cheers