A court in Macedonia has convicted a bear of theft and criminal damage for stealing honey from a beekeeper. However, there was an empty dock, and no handcuffed bear. This report from BBC Paddy Clark:
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The case was brought by an exasperated beekeeper after a year of vainly trying to protect his beehives from the marauding bear.
For a while, he kept the animal away by buying a generator, lighting up the area, and playing thumping Serbian turbo-folk music. But when the generator ran out of power and the music fell silent, the bear was back and the honey was gone again.
The beekeeper decided to go to law, and the bear was tried in absentia. The court agreed he had a case and found the bear guilty. But because the animal had no owner and belonged to a protected species, it ordered the state to pay for the damage.
The bear, meanwhile, remains at large -- somewhere in Macedonia.
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