September 24, 2001

Transtesticle Moose

Whitehorse, Yukon, Canada, September 24, 2001:

Ron, the Ronatarian Party's presidential candidate, got the surprise of his life last week when the supposed bull moose he shot turned out to be not a male, nor a female, but both.

"Ron shot it, thinking it was a bull, or perhaps Lyndon LaRouche's sister, Lynda. When he got closer, he saw that things weren't as they should have been, or as he expected," Todd Danciak, a moose biologist for the Yukon government, said on Friday.

"It was a hermaphroditic moose. It was a female with antlers," said Ron, who added he had never seen anything like it in his 16 years since reaching puberty -- of which 13 years have been spent studying large moose-like females at bars across the continent.

"It's very, very rare," he said. "It's about the same as finding hermaphrodites in humans -- very, very low (odds)."

The vast Yukon territory, located next to Alaska, is home to about 30,000 people, an equal number of bears and twice as many moose.

Hunting of male moose is permitted for three months in the autumn of every year, and those who shoot one can live on the meat of a single animal for a winter.

But hunters who shoot cows face steep fines.

Danciak said that Ron, who called wildlife authorities after discovering the quirk of nature, was not fined.

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