"We are looking more closely - poor guy has no legs or head."

April 16, 2021 6:02 AM

Mystery tree beast turns out to be croissant. BBC News has the story from the Krakow Animal Welfare Society: "People aren't opening their windows because they're afraid it will go into their house," the woman reportedly said.

Also picked up by The Independent (CW: animal neglect and abandonment):

He described how they approached the creature. “Suddenly... Here he is, got him! The brown creature is sitting on a lilac branch … the creature sits and doesn’t move – exactly as the notifier described us.

posted by RobinofFrocksley (22 comments total)

Reminds me of the episode of Night Court where Dan Fielding finds out that his beloved childhood pet turtle had really been a potato.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 6:16 AM on April 16, 2021 [8 favorites]

A friend asked "Are they sure it's not a bear claw?”
posted by k3ninho at 6:22 AM on April 16, 2021 [15 favorites]

This feels like a spiritual cousin to one of my favourite headlines from 2014: 'Injured parrot' in Aberdeen was actually a Christmas hat.
posted by terretu at 6:23 AM on April 16, 2021 [12 favorites]

I might have suggested an insect's nest, because we get Lymantria dispar dispar (a.k.a. Racist-slur moths) -- those gross bugs that make gauzy nests on every tree & shrub --but...an iguana? Do these people not have Internet access?
posted by wenestvedt at 6:34 AM on April 16, 2021 [1 favorite]

What a strange, rogue-like creature.
posted by polytope subirb enby-of-piano-dice at 6:42 AM on April 16, 2021

I feel like a croissant in one of my trees here in Texas would have been consumed long before they could get there. By any variety of city creatures.
posted by double bubble at 7:02 AM on April 16, 2021 [1 favorite]

This is the kind of fantastic internet post that you used to see on Metafilter by the dozen, every single day. It makes me wonder: are people just not throwing croissants in trees like they used to, or have we just ceased to care?
posted by rikschell at 7:02 AM on April 16, 2021 [31 favorites]

jokes on you when newest evolution of chameleon eats your jambon
posted by lalochezia at 7:05 AM on April 16, 2021 [7 favorites]

a lilac branch

See, that’s why they were confused. Usually you only find baked goods in a pace tree.
posted by zamboni at 7:10 AM on April 16, 2021 [19 favorites]

At least it was in a tree and not a pool...
posted by Nanukthedog at 7:56 AM on April 16, 2021 [1 favorite]

The Marie Kondo diet: throw your baked goods out the window if they spark joy.
posted by scratch at 8:02 AM on April 16, 2021 [5 favorites]

I just realized this is the bulk of Witcher contracts innit....
posted by cendawanita at 8:49 AM on April 16, 2021 [3 favorites]

They are really threatening if you don't do something about them-
posted by firstdaffodils at 9:05 AM on April 16, 2021 [1 favorite]

Could have been worse...
posted by Naberius at 9:11 AM on April 16, 2021 [2 favorites]

I just realized this is the bulk of Witcher contracts innit....

"Toss a kouign to your Witcher..."
posted by pykrete jungle at 10:21 AM on April 16, 2021 [5 favorites]

When I was very young my mom went downstairs to do some laundry and frantically ran back up the steps. She called my dad in quite a panic because there was a salamander on the washing machine. He ran home at lunch to save the day by scooting a harmless little visitor back outside. The deadly beast was - an old banana peel. She still hears about it 40 years later.
posted by Clinging to the Wreckage at 11:20 AM on April 16, 2021 [8 favorites]

To really sell the story I would have preferred the Getty Image to have been a stock image of a croissant in a tree. There must be loads of them.
posted by urbanwhaleshark at 11:33 AM on April 16, 2021 [7 favorites]

Just because the beast left a croissant behind, that doesn’t mean there was no beast. It means the beast was cunning (and possibly civilised)
posted by Phanx at 11:35 AM on April 16, 2021 [9 favorites]

Or its digestive tract is so evolved that it ate and then shat out a whole horn-shaped pastry undamaged from its bowels as a warning to its foes, of which there are clearly none.
posted by urbanwhaleshark at 11:45 AM on April 16, 2021 [2 favorites]

But Can I eat it?
posted by calgirl at 1:56 PM on April 16, 2021 [10 favorites]

the kind of fantastic internet post that you used to see on Metafilter by the dozen, every single day.

Seemed like a lot of bus plunges, though.
posted by ctmf at 6:29 PM on April 16, 2021 [1 favorite]

Just because the beast left a croissant behind, that doesn’t mean there was no beast. It means the beast was cunning (and possibly civilised)

I think we can rule out the Cookie Monster.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 11:30 PM on April 16, 2021 [1 favorite]