The loon and wolf may define Canadian animals, but the real stories are in the city.
PACK YOUR TRUNKS
Shu Mei, a resident of Newmarket, Ontario, woke up to an incredibly bad smell one morning in 2007. “I opened the front door and I didn’t know what the smell was,” Mei told reporters. “But not good. And then I saw it.”
What Mei saw might have been left behind by a colossal mutant dog from the neighborhood. While that may seem far-fetched, the truth is even stranger.
CAUGHT IN THE ACT
In reality, an elephant had pulled her own Operation Dumbo Drop and left behind her “calling card.” But what was an elephant doing roaming the streets of this peaceful suburban neighborhood? Mei wasn’t imagining things. Other neighbors reported peering out their windows in the very early hours of the morning to spy pachyderms munching leaves on a tree and hanging out on the street corner.
Elephants strolling through Newmarket aren’t the norm, but the Garden Bros. Circus was in town and the power supply to the electric fence that keeps the elephants penned in was cut off. Someone accidentally tripped over the cord that kept the fence charged. Susie and Bunny, two of three Asian elephants kept by the circus, realized that they could easily break out and take a walk around town.
IT’S RAINING GEESE
On April 22, 1932, the townspeople of Elgin, Manitoba, found a delicious goose dinner dropping from the sky. A flock of Canada geese were flying overhead during an electrical storm. The unfortunate birds ran afoul of some lightning, and 52 of them were electrocuted in midflight. The geese all plummeted into Elgin, where the citizens celebrated. They gathered the geese and served them on dinner tables throughout the town.
In the 1760s, Britain was considering trading Canada for France’s Guadeloupe.