June 4th, 2007, filed by Robert Basler
“Hey, Bill, you take your cell phone into the jungle and we’ll call you…It’ll be fun!”
It turns out this area in India has a problem with leopards wandering into human settlements, which is something you would consider more urgent than, say, mice or mosquitoes, and they’ve come up with a novel way to catch the big cats. They set the ringtones on their cell phones for the sounds of cows mooing and goats bleating, amplify them through speakers for hours until a curious leopard arrives, then they capture it.
Of course, the leopards will have the last laugh when those phone bills start arriving. “Hey look, it cost those guys 116 extra minutes to catch me!” Here is the story:
More Oddly Enough Blog
A Leopard looks out from his enclosure at a wildlife sanctuary in the northern Indian city of Jammu in a 2005 photo. REUTERS/Amit Gupta
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June 4th, 2007 at 4:16 pm GMT
One of the villagers forgot to change his ring, and still had it set to that stupid new Avril Lavigne song. While the Leopard was lured by the animal sounds, the shrill sound of “Girlfriend” caused the Leopard to go mad and eat the villagers.
I know I would.
June 4th, 2007 at 5:09 pm GMT
Apparently Rube Goldberg is alive and well in Jammu.
June 4th, 2007 at 5:20 pm GMT
It would have been a great plan, except the Leopard outsmarted them by sending them all text messages while they were driving home from their jobs.
The Leopard is the only remaining life in the village.
June 4th, 2007 at 5:35 pm GMT
John, I almost mentioned Rube Goldberg myself. If you visualize this entire process it’s pretty classic stuff. You gotta figure at least one of these guys has gone to all this trouble and then set his phone on vibrate, by mistake…