Giant Badgers Terrorizing Iraq?

British
forces have denied rumours that they released a plague of ferocious
badgers into the Iraqi city of Basra.

Word spread among the populace that UK troops had introduced strange man-eating, bear-like beasts into the area to sow panic.

THE Iraqi port city of Basra, already prey to a nasty turf war between rival militia factions, has now been gripped by a scary rumour – giant badgers are stalking the streets by night, eating humans.

The animals were allegedly released into the area by British forces.

Local farmers have caught and killed several of the beasts, but this has done nothing to dispel the rumour.

Iraqi scientists have attempted to calm things down. However, the story has spread like wildfire in the streets of the city and the villages round about.

Mushtaq Abdul-Mahdi, director of Basra's veterinary hospital, has inspected the corpses of several badgers and tries to reassure Iraqis that the animals are not a new post-war arrival in the region.

“These animals appeared before the fall of the regime in 1986. They are known as Al-Ghirayri and locally as Al-Girta,” he told AFP. “Talk that this animal was brought by the British forces is incorrect and unscientific.”

The animal is known locally as the Garta or ‘the muncher,’ and mothers
in Basrah used to tell scary stories about the Garta to their children
so they would not wander out alone at night. Old families in Basrah
believe the animal brings bad luck because it is mostly found in
cemeteries at night. The unusual phenomenon, however, is their sudden
appearance in large numbers near the city and their increasingly
aggressive behavior.