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Coyotes at a golf course in western Canada had sports fans howling this week, chasing balls, chewing broadcast cables and generally creating havoc at the CN Canadian Women's Open.
Television crews preparing for the tournament at the Vancouver Golf Club replaced several chewed cables along the fairways and soaked others in vinegar to discourage further tampering by the resident wildlife.
"We basically come in each morning and see what lines fire up," Larry Isaac, a producer with public broadcaster CBC told the local Vancouver Sun newspaper, adding: "They seem to only like the cables between (holes) 14 and 17."
The CBC crew finally raised lines off the ground and hooked them to ropes lining the fairways to safeguard them ahead of the start of play Thursday.
But the animal mischief didn't end there. During practice play, some coyotes came out of the woods to sniff golf balls that had just been hit from tees by players in the tournament such as Michelle Wie, Lorie Kane and Brittany Lang.
The Canadian Women's Open is the latest to face such challenges. At the PGA championship on Kiawah Island in South Carolina, CBS reportedly lost seven boom microphones when alligators came from marshes to steal them during the night.
A golf club in southern Sweden is planning to hunt the crows on their course after a violent spate of attacks and thieveries have left golfers in fear.
Golfers at the Rya Golf Club in Rydebäck, southern Sweden, have been subjected to a swarm of attacks from angry birds which are both hungry and breeding.
“This year, they actually attacked our guests for the first time,” the club’s receptionist, Annika Hermansson, told The Local.
“The crows have always come down looking for people’s food, but they are getting vicious this year.”
Hermansson claims that around 10 people have complained of attacks, one of whom compared his ordeal to a horror film.
“I was just about to swing when two big crows started attacking and biting me. They flew at my head from two different angles and when I hit back they started attacking one another,” Gry Nilsson told the local Helsingblad Dagbladet newspaper.
“It was nasty; I was completely alone and thought that even more would come. It was as if we were in Hitchcock’s 'The Birds'.”
However, the birds are not only attacking avid golfers – they’re also commiting a new and irritating feathered felony.
“They’re taking people’s lunch - but it doesn’t stop at that! Some people have lost their keys, glasses – even their telephones,” Hermansson told The Local.
“We’ve had to warn guests to keep their bags tightly closed at all times and we’re even considering introducing hats for the players with big eyes on them to frighten off the crows.”
However, if simply scaring the birds away doesn’t work, the club is prepared to look into more drastic measures, as it has in previous years.
“We’re planning to have the birds professionally hunted. Such measures can be taken when animals are causing trouble like this, especially when they are hurting people,” Hermansson told The Local.
Oliver Gee
http://www.thelocal.se/41854/20120705/
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