Beast in the Building

What flavor smoothie?

Connie: AAGH! What's that?!

Sid: It's all right, Con. It's only a donkey.

Connie: I know it's a donkey, what's it doing in my lounge?!

— Carry On Girls

A trope usually Played for Laughs when a live animal is seen indoors, in a place where such an animal would not normally be seen. This can happen if somebody takes the animal inside, perhaps for a dramatic entrance, or for a prank; or if the animal wanders into the building on its own. This is most often played with large animals such as horses if they enter a place other than a stable; but can happen with smaller animals such as pigs or sheep, if they stray into a house from a farmyard. This can also apply to animals being unexpectedly in other enclosed spaces such as a tunnel, vehicle, boat, or aircraft, which can be even more of a problem, as it is then even harder for the animals or people to escape.

This can overlap with No Animals Allowed, especially when the animal is first pointed out. For this trope to apply, it must be an unusual situation for the animal. This does not generally apply to indoor pets in their home setting unless the pet is taken to another inappropriate indoor place. This trope does not cover animals being taken indoors to be cared for, or a vet's surgery unless the animal's size or temperament means it is highly inappropriate for the animal to be there. Unorthodox animals intentionally kept as pets are Unusual Pets for Unusual People.

This can be combined with a gag of the animal urinating or defecating while indoors, or eating things around the house. This can also lead to Nightmare Fuel if a dangerous animal, such as a venomous snake, finds its way indoors. This trope can also apply in Surrealism, where animals are sometimes seen out of place.

Not to be confused with Elephant in the Living Room. Compare Eerily Out-of-Place Object and Secret Pet Plot. Contrast with Trapped-with-Monster Plot, the version of this trope definitely not played for laughs.

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Examples:

Advertising

• An Advert for Specsavers opticians shows a horse being ridden through the ticket gates on the London Underground, with the tagline that the rider should have gone to Specsavers.
• A 2010 Sears Optical commercial shows a woman calling her cat inside at night and letting in a raccoon because she can't see it clearly, implying the chaos about to happen.
  Woman: [to raccoon] Come snuggle with mama!
• An advertisement for PBS in the early 2000s showed a skunk slipping through the pet door into a house, where it proceeded to wander around until it got into the bedroom, where the sleepy homeowner proceeded to cuddle it. The camera then shifted over to the nightstand, showing a picture that proved the skunk to actually be the family's pet with PBS's then-current slogan of "Be More Adventurous."

Anime and Manga

• Princess Tutu: Subverted. Ahiru attempts to deliver a letter to Mytho in her duck form by breaking into the boys' locker room, hiding so as not to get caught and thrown out. The normally gruff Fakir finds her there, causing her to flush with embarrassment and expect the worst. However, he is surprisingly gentle with her (thinking she's just a dumb duck), bringing her back outside before feeding her breadcrumbs, only lightly scolding her for being silly enough to think she would find food in there. This is the first hint that he is actually a Jerk with a Heart of Gold.
• World's End Harem: A couple chapters after protagonist Reito Mizuhara is brought out of cryostasis, he's on his way to a lab in the United Women's Japan HQ when the group is suddenly attacked by a bear coming down the hallway. It was released by one of the villains in hopes it would kill him.

Art

• Danger on the Stairs, by the surrealist Pierre Roy, depicts a large constrictor snake on the staircase in a European house.

Comedy

• John Mulaney has a sketch about a horse loose in a hospital, and how no one knows how to deal with it. It's an analogy for the then-current Trump administration.
  It's never happened before, no one knows what the horse is going to do next, least of all the horse. He's never been in a hospital before, he's as confused as you are.

Comic Strips

• In the original St Trinians cartoons:
  • A girl is seen struggling with an enormous boa constrictor around her waist. This is captioned "But Mrs Merryweather, you said we could bring our pets with us!"
  • Another girl is seen leading an enormous bull by a rope. This is captioned "Elspeth! Put that back AT ONCE!"

Fan Works

• In the Discworld as revisited by A.A. Pessimal, a local zoologist helping the Watch with a tricky animal-handling case has to explain to Sam Vimes about the thing with urban foxes colonising the city? Well, this is a case of urban hermit elephants finding an ecological niche.
• With Pearl and Ruby Glowing: Kristoff stole Sven the reindeer from a petting zoo while he was drunk and hid him in his apartment. After the cops were called on Kristoff, Sven had to be taken out of the apartment with a crane because he couldn't go down the stairs and he was too big for the elevator.
• Witches Wizards Shadows and Souls: In his first letter to Yugi while he's attending Hogwarts, Kaiba yells at him for using an owl to send it to his office because the secretary panicked from seeing a bird indoors.

Film — Animated

• DuckTales the Movie: Treasure of the Lost Lamp: Webby wishes for a baby elephant which appears in the mansion; Mrs. Beakley completely freaks out upon seeing it.

Film — Live-Action

• Carry On Girls: Sid Fiddler brings a donkey named Cleopatra into the Palace Hotel's lounge, making Connie Philpotts scream.
• Carry On Screaming!: While Sidney Bung and Albert Potter are staying the night in the creepy mansion, a very large snake winds its way down a servant bell rope directly into the bed of the two men. This is what prompts Albert to try to get out of the house.
• The Hangover: The main characters wake up after a blackout drunk bachelor party to a trashed hotel suite full of unexplained items, including a live chicken. When Alan goes to the bathroom, it takes him a moment to realize there's a tiger with him. They stole it from Mike Tyson.
• Indiana Jones:
  • Raiders of the Lost Ark: When Indy and Sallah open the Well of Souls, they discover it's infested with snakes, to Indy's frustration since it's his one fear. Later, the Nazis seal Marion and Indy in this snake-infested pit where the two have to fend off the snakes and find a way out.
    Indiana: Snakes. Why did it have to be snakes?
  • Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: In the opening flashback, young Indy tries to escape the thieves on top of a circus train. Within the train cars, he encounters alligators, a rhino, a lion, and, of course, snakes. Falling into a pit of snakes turns out to be the origin of his phobia.
• Jumanji: The cursed board game which is the film's namesake makes wild jungle animals appear wherever the game is being played. Playing the game inside the Parrish house causes bats, lions, giant mosquitos, monkeys, and more to attack the players and anyone else who is around until the game is over.
• Laurel and Hardy: In the 1932 short The Chimp, the boys are out-of-work circus performers who end up in possession of a gorilla named Ethel, who they try to hide from the landlord of their boarding house.
• The Little Rascals: In the 1928 short Barnum & Ringing, Inc., the kids hold a circus in a ritzy hotel with all the live animals they could get their hands on, which soon escape and run amok.
• Night at the Museum: When the museum exhibits come to life at night, Larry is forced to deal with the multiple taxidermied animals, particularly the mischievous monkey Dexter, and the living skeleton of a T-Rex. Ironically, it's his job to keep the animals from leaving the museum, since if they are caught outside after sunrise they will turn to dust.
• Snakes on a Plane: Exactly What It Says on the Tin. The film involves a convoluted scheme to kill the protected witness to a mobster's crime by using snakes to = ground his plane mid-flight.
  Flynn: Enough is ENOUGH! I have HAD IT with these motherfuckin' snakes on this motherfuckin' plane!
• Spaceballs: During the "self-destruct" sequence, a huge bear from the circus steals President Skroob's escape pod.
• True Lies: Secret agent Harry Tasker commandeers a mounted D.C. officer's horse to chase a suspect through a mall and a hotel. At one point he even takes an elevator while astride the animal.

Literature

• Adrian Mole: Adrian thinks it is a mistake that at the midnight service on Christmas Eve, there is a live donkey in the church, even though the vicar is in charge of an animal sanctuary.
• Holmes on the Range: In Hunters of the Dead, two well-behaved pigs are inside the local bar. The bartender explains that hungry thieves kept stealing his pigs when he kept them in a pen outside.
• Roald Dahl was terrified of snakes, especially when he worked in East Africa. In his autobiography Going Solo, he writes about an enormous deadly green mamba entering a house, the family evacuating themselves from an upstairs window, and the snake being skillfully and humanely captured by a snake-catcher.
• Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency: An Electric Monk leaves his horse in Professor Chronotis's bathroom after travelling through a time portal. The Professor's lack of reaction to the discovery is an early hint that there is more to him than meets the eye.
• Discworld:
  • In Jingo, a donkey gets stuck inside a minaret. It's apparently a recurring problem in Klatch since the donkey can't turn around and won't back down - not dissimilar to the war brewing between Klatch and Ankh-Morpork. Nevertheless, The Chessmaster Patrician Vetinari coaxes it down with "persuasion. And, admittedly, a sharp stick."
    Vetinari: The trick of getting donkeys down from minarets is always to find that part of the donkey which seriously wishes to get down.
  • In Hogfather, when Death temporarily replaces the Hogfather (the Disc's equivalent of Santa), he is advised to make a public appearance as a Mall Santa. He brings the whole sleigh along, all four enormous sleigh-pulling boars included. One pees on the stairs, much to the delight of the children.
  • In Mort, Mort flies Death's Cool Horse to a castle and leaves it right there in the tower while he goes to visit a princess. No one notices it, because a horse simply shouldn't be there.
• In the children's story Lion At School by Philippa Pearce, a little girl is confronted by a fierce lion who threatens to eat her up, unless she takes him to school with her. When the girl pleads that she's not allowed to take pets to school, the lion instructs her to tell her teacher that he is a friend who is coming to school with her, which she does. The teacher is bemused but enters the lion in the register, and the lion joins in the school day.
• Mr. Men: In a book of short Mr Men stories, Mr Happy comments that Mr Silly's horse needs new shoes. Mr Silly promptly takes the horse into an actual shoe shop, where four running shoes are fitted to the horse by bemused staff.
• Thomas & Friends: In Troublesome Engines, Henry is sent to investigate a blocked railway tunnel. It turns out the blockage is a live circus elephant.
• Wayside School: At the end of Wayside School Is Falling Down, Mrs. Jewels accidentally summons a herd of cattle into the school when she uses a cowbell as an alarm during a fire drill. The cows climb up the building's stairs and end up unable to go back down, forcing the school (a skyscraper where every floor is one classroom) to shut down and temporarily transfer the students while Louis the janitor clears the cattle out. Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger reveals that he mostly succeeded, but a few cows are still lost within the halls of the place.
• In The Worst Witch: Inside the school, Miss Hardbroom suddenly enters to find a pig there, which Mildred tries to pass off as a stray. When the pig talks and explains that she is actually Ethel whom Mildred had turned into a pig, Miss Hardbroom sends Mildred to the library to look up how to remove the spell, telling her to take the pig with her. Mildred is very embarrassed to take a pig into the library, especially as Ethel moans "hurry up", and keeps grunting loudly on purpose.
  Miss Hardbroom: What is this animal doing here?
  Mildred: Er... I let it in, Miss Hardbroom.
  Miss Hardbroom: Well, you can just let it out again, please.
  Mildred: Oh, er... couldn't I keep it as a pet?
  Miss Hardbroom: I think you have quite enough with that cat, without adding a pig to your worries.

Live-Action TV

• Big Time Rush: In "Green Time Rush", Carlos and James decide to use a cow as their Earth Day project and smuggle it into the Palm Woods. They're forced to hide the cow from Bitters, and at one point it wanders off from them, meaning that there's just a cow causing a ruckus in the hotel.
• This happens twice in the first series of Blackadder.
  • In "Born to be King", McAngus makes his mighty first entrance into the great hall of the castle actually on a horse.
  • In "Witchsmeller Pursuivant", Edmund's horse Black Satin appears in the witness box in the courtroom.
• The Brittas Empire: For an average leisure centre, the place seems to get a lot of animals running around in it.
  • In "The Old, Old Story", something is attacking the customers and users of the Leisure Centre building, so the staff fear that a serial killer is on the loose. It turns out to be an emu, who was turned loose in the building by the army when Brittas refused to allow them in for the reopening of the centre.
  • In "At the Double", a bear that belongs to the Ruthenian circus runs loose in the centre, so Brittas tells everyone to hide in the pool. Unfortunately, Helen thinks that the bear is Brittas wearing a costume for Kinky Role-Playing, and ends up on top of the bear as it bicycles down the side of the pool.
  • In "Mr. Brittas Falls in Love", Brittas is inspired by some time spent with dolphins on a European fact-finding trip to host a "Dolphin Day", complete with a dolphin in the swimming pool. Unfortunately, a combination of Julie's poor secretary skills and Tim's desire to use only the finest ingredients for his cooking leads to a shark being put there instead. Whilst Linda tries to remove it alongside her animal rights group, chaos ensues when the shark is feared to have gobbled up a girl there on work experience.
  • In "Wake Up the Lion Within", Colin purchases a lion with the intention of presenting it as part of his newly opened Children's Corner, all under the cover that it's a "Tasmanian Chipmunk". By the end of the episode, it ends up escaping, wandering through the centre, and hitching a ride in the car of the woman who has just given the centre a European Award for Excellence. The lion isn't the only animal roaming the centre that episode either, with a duck on top of the reception desk, a rabbit doing its business on the floor of said reception, and Helen drunkenly counseling a sheep in her office in the centre.
• Castle: In "Cuffed", Castle and Beckett wake up in a locked room, handcuffed together. When they try to break through a wall to escape, they discover a hungry tiger on the other side, to their horror — their captors are involved in illegal animal trafficking, and Castle and Beckett walked in on their operation. They are forced to fend off the tiger until Ryan and Esposito can discover their location.
• In "No Pets Allowed", the premiere of Series 12 of ChuckleVision, the Chuckle Brothers are to perform a conjuring set in a hotel that pets are banned from by the allergic landlady, only to find that their rabbit is missing and appears to have been replaced with a rhinoceros. The Chuckles now have to lure it out of the building and into a safari park before the landlady finds out.
• CSI: NY:
  • In "Till Death Do We Part," two doves are found in a basket that was meant to be opened during a wedding held in a hotel ballroom. They had been alive when placed there but died before the ceremony... along with the bride. The investigators question the unusual practice of releasing them indoors.
  • In "Sweet 16," the birthday girl's brother tries to scare her by putting a poisonous snake in the expensive car their father surprises her with at her party. While that doesn't happen, the dad is found dead in the vehicle and when the team investigates, the snake bites Det. Monroe who has to be raced to the hospital for antivenin.
  • In "Turbulence," a nightclub owner keeps his pet jaguar on the premises, and his scantily clad female employees walk her around on a leash. He tells the detectives that she's a bigger draw to the club than he is.
• Doctor Who:
  • In "The Girl in the Fireplace", while on a mysterious abandoned spaceship, the Tenth Doctor finds a horse in the middle of a hallway. The horse proceeds to follow the Doctor around until they run into Mickey and Rose. After discovering the ship also contains multiple portals to 18th-century France, the following exchange occurs:
    Mickey: What's a horse doing on a spaceship?
    Doctor: Mickey, what's pre-revolutionary France doing on a spaceship? Get a little perspective.
  • In "Dinosaurs on a Spaceship", the Eleventh Doctor finds a seemingly abandoned spaceship about to crash into Earth that's full of dinosaurs. He's ecstatic, though also curious why the dinosaurs are there. It turns out to be an ancient arc made by the Silurians to save a handful of dinosaurs from extinction, taken from them by the greedy Solomon.
• Drake & Josh: In "Sheep Thrills", Megan convinces the boys to raise a sheep named "Baaaab" that she bought online. They have to keep the sheep in their room, but it escapes and creates chaos in the house. Things get worse when Baaaab gives birth.
• Green Wing includes a brief, but memorable moment, where Sue White brings a Bactrian camel into her office at the hospital, but upon learning today is not a "bring pets in" day, she panics and has to slowly escort the camel out of there.
• House of Anubis: When Jerome needs to send Mr. Sweet on a "wild goose chase" in order to retrieve the gem hidden in the suit of armor in the headmaster's office, Alfie takes it literally and gets an actual goose that they release into the school. The goose runs around, scaring everyone as Alfie actively sabotages Mr. Sweet's attempts to capture it in order to buy Jerome more time. After they finally capture it, Jerome and Alfie have to hide it in their room for a few more days, which is a problem because Anubis House doesn't allow pets.
• How I Met Your Mother:
  • In "The Goat" and "The Leap", Lily brings a goat named Missy home to her apartment after a farmer brought her in to show her kindergarten class and horrified them with stories of the slaughterhouse. Ted, however, was not expecting the goat, and it causes a lot of trouble for Ted's birthday, including putting Ted in some of the worst pain in his life when he attempts to confront her and she beats him up badly enough to get hospitalized.
  • A Running Gag throughout multiple episodes involves the cockamouse, a creature Lily and Marshall discover in their apartment, never clearly seen by the viewer.
    • In "Matchmaker", they argue at first over whether it was a mouse or a cockroach, only to come to the conclusion that it's some sort of mutant hybrid of the two. They make multiple attempts to kill or trap it before Marshall manages to throw it out the window... only to discover it can fly. They quickly shut the window.
    • In "The Perfect Cocktail", Ted encounters it at The Arcadian when he and Zoey spend the night there, but while Zoey freaks out Ted is surprisingly chill. It has apparently had babies since then.
    • In "Last Forever", a second sighting of the cockamouse convinces Lily and Marshall to sell their apartment (partly because Lily is pregnant).
• The Julie Andrews episode of The Muppet Show had a subplot about a cow (an actual cow, not a muppet cow) that had somehow ended up backstage. At the end of the episode, it turns out to be Julie Andrews' pet.
• One Foot in the Grave: In "The Return of the Speckled Band", an Indian Python escapes a garden centre and ends up in the Meldrew's house. Whilst one man manages to catch a glimpse of it, the Meldrews never do, and the snake ends up in their suitcase for their holiday to Anthens. The next episode, "In Luton Airport No-One Can Hear You Scream", reveals that the snake didn't survive the holiday, its corpse being eventually found in the flight bag.
• Phoenix Nights: Brian Potter is none too happy to find that Wild Bill, one of the entertainers at the Phoenix Club's Wild West night, has brought his horse Trigger into the cabaret suite (mainly because it leaves its droppings on the floor). He's even less happy when they leave the horse in the empty bar, and it goes behind the counter and gets drunk.
• Play School features the song "Squash and a Squeeze", in which a woman lives in a tiny house, so a man tells her to take in her hen, her goat, her pig, and her cow. Hilarity ensues until the man tells her to take all the animals out, making the house seem much bigger.
• Happens quite a bit in Primeval, given that anomalies can open just about anywhere. Examples are a gorgonopsid in a school, raptors in a shopping mall, a Giganotosaurus in an airport, and a Pristichampsus in a museum, among many others.
• In an episode of The Suite Life of Zack & Cody, the twins hide a horse in the hotel.
  Carey: Kids, do you know there's a horse in the living room?
  Zack: No, but if you hum a few bars...
• 2point4 Children: Whilst visiting Rona in her living room in "Frenzy", Bill is startled to find two hooded cobras there, having apparently escaped from pizza boxes that Rona had ordered and which have taken up residence in her home. They subsequently spend the episode in fear that the cobras will kill them... until Bill hears what sounds like fire engines coming to her house, at which point she manages to subdue the cobras with ease.

Theme Parks

• The ride Dinosaur at Walt Disney World has the main premise of going back in time to save Aladar the Iguanadon and bring him back to the paleontology institute. The riders (despite facing the extinction event and a hungry Carnataurus) succeed. If one looks at the TV screens on display in the gift shop, they'll see footage of Aladar roaming the halls of the Institute while scientists and security run around trying to catch him.

Video Games

• The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim: One of the repeatable Companions quests is "Animal Extermination", where you're assigned to kill a large beast such as a bear or sabre cat that has somehow made its way into a home or shop.
• Last Half of Darkness: If you open a filing cabinet in the secret lab, the result of one of your aunt's experiments (a huge snake) kills you.
• The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time: The reward for completing Malon's obstacle course is the delivery of a cow to Link's house — which is a treehouse only accessible by a ladder.
• Them's Fightin' Herds: Arizona can find a sleeping bear at the end of a secret Bookcase Passage in a museum library. She can optionally fight it to get the MiniVelvet cosmetic, but there's no word of how and why a bear even got inside Reine's museum.
• In Fallout: New Vegas, a random event has a live brahmin (a mutated cow) running down the Vegas Strip, which is walled off and definitely not a place for livestock, being pursued by a NCR MP.

Western Animation

• Bob's Burgers has an episode where he brings Moo-Lissa the cow inside their tiny, walk-up apartment. She stays because it turns out cows can't walk downstairs - until a fed-up Linda invents a way (sliding her down on a mattress).
• Classic Disney Shorts: In Mr. Mouse Takes a Trip, Mickey tries to bring Pluto with him on a train ride while hiding him from conductor Pete.
• Looney Tunes:
  • The Sylvester and Tweety cartoon "Room and Bird" has the cat and bird's owners keeping them secretly inside an apartment building that doesn't allow pets. In the end, the manager finds out and announces on the PA system that all pets must be removed from the premises immediately. He is then trampled by a stampede of wild animals, including lions, giraffes, elephants, and a little monkey.
  • "Dime to Retire" has Porky stay in Daffy's hotel, which only charges a dime a night. It turns out to be a scam, as Daffy gets his real money by charging exorbitant amounts to get animals out of the room. Starting with a mouse, he escalates to a cat, a dog, then a lion and finally an elephant (which Daffy removes by scaring it with the original mouse).
• In The Little Rascals short "Trash Can Treasures", while Alfalfa and Spanky return stolen money to the bank, the other Rascals wait outside on Darla's horse. Frightened by the traffic, the horse gallops into the bank, with Darla, Buckwheat, and Porky still on it.
• In the Mickey Mouse cartoon "Mickey and the Seal", a baby seal follows Mickey home from the zoo. Only Pluto is aware of the intruder but fails to get his master to notice it until he finds it in the bathtub during his bath. He returns the pup to the zoo, where he tells the other seals about all the fun he had at Mickey's house; Mickey and Pluto return to find the seals having a wild party at their home.
• In the Popeye cartoon "Her Honor the Mare", Popeye's nephews find an old horse and sneak it into the house as a pet, trying to hide it from their uncle.
  • The Hanna-Barbera short "A Seal with Appeal" is similar, but the boys try to hide a seal from their Uncle Popeye.
• The Powerpuff Girls (1998): In "Helter Shelter", it's shown that Bubbles has a habit of bringing home small animals, and the Professor tells her to stop hiding these critters in the closet. This leads to Bubbles bringing home a baby whale, because it can't fit in a closet.
• The Simpsons:
  • In "Sweet Seymour Skinner's Baadasssss Song", Bart brings his dog, Santa's Little Helper, to show and tell at school. The dog soon escapes into the air ducts, leading to a chain of events that leads to Principal Skinner getting fired.
  • In "Jazzy and the Pussycats", Lisa gets depressed when Bart's drumming skills land him a gig in the jazz band she wanted to be in, so she copes by adopting abandoned animals (including some from a circus) and hiding them in the attic... which just happens to be where Bart and his pals like to practice, leading to a tiger cub biting Bart in his drumming arm. The next day, Lisa is told by Chief Wiggum that she has to sell the animals within 24 hours or they'll be seized and put down; Bart manages to raise money for surgery to fix his arm, but he feels bad for Lisa and decides to use the money to build a homeless animal sanctuary named in her honor.
  • In "My Octopus and a Teacher", Lisa makes a documentary about an octopus that ends with it seemingly eaten by a shark. It turns out, however, that Lisa saved the octopus and took it home, hiding it from the family. The octopus, however, keeps getting out of its tank and wandering around the house, narrowly avoiding danger on several occasions. Through a complicated series of events, the octopus latches onto Bart's face during a school assembly, leading to him accidentally wreaking havoc.
  • In "Whacking Day", Bart and Lisa hide all the snakes in Springfield in the Simpson house to keep them from being killed during the titular holiday.
  • A brief gag on "Marge vs. the Monorail" has Marge finding a family of possums living in the fire extinguisher compartment of the monorail engine.
    Homer: I call the big one Bitey.
• SpongeBob SquarePants: In "My Pretty Seahorse", SpongeBob takes in a wild seahorse that he names Mystery. When he brings the horse to work and Mr. Krabs tells him to get rid of it, he tries hiding it in the Krusty Krab's kitchen, something that proves easier said when Mystery starts eating everything in sight.
• Many Tom and Jerry cartoons have an animal escaped from the zoo or circus hiding in Tom's house with help from Jerry. They have included a lion ("Jerry and the Lion"), a baby elephant ("Jerry and Jumbo"), a seal pup ("Little Runaway"), and a trained bear ("Down Beat Bear").

Real Life

• Occasionally horse riders have used McDonald's drive-thru, with varying levels of success. Some have been refused service for safety reasons. One such rider in the United Kingdom was not satisfied with having to wait at the drive-thru, so he took the horse into the restaurant itself; and the horse defecated.
• Due to San Antonio's position on their migration path, bats have occasionally crashed San Antonio Spurs games, with one memorable example being when a bat was swatted out of the air by the Spurs' Manu Ginobli.
• In the early 1700's, Abraham Sever, an enterprising animal handler in Edinburgh, Scotland, somehow managed to keep the other half of his animal act at home with him in between performances. If this had been a smaller creature than an elephant, it might have gone unremarked. But the neighbours protested.

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"Who let these examples in?!"

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