Drunken Elks Attack Old People's Home

A drunken party of elks surrounded an old people's home in Sweden and had to be driven away by armed police, Sweden's media reported yesterday.

The elks attacked the home in the town of Östra Göinge, near Malmö, after devouring large numbers of fermented apples, the paper Dagens Nyheter said. Police with dogs had failed to scare them off, and the animals only ran away after hunters with guns arrived on the scene.

"It's not unusual for elks to get drunk," forester Fredrik Jönsson told the newspaper. "They don't recognise the difference between fermented and not fermented and stuff themselves down to the last apple." Mr Jönsson did not know how many apples the elks had eaten.

There have been previous problems with elks: a female elk recently attacked three joggers in Norway. Last year another elk in Sweden stole a bicycle from a garden, which it regularly visited to eat the roses. An elderly couple had used the bike to fence off their garden; the elk disappeared with the bike hanging round its neck. The bike was later found bent and damaged beyond repair.

Once widespread across Europe, elks now live in Canada, Scandinavia, the Baltics, Poland and the Czech Republic. Earlier this week, however, an elk was spotted for the first time in recent memory in Bavaria, after apparently wandering across the Czech-German border.

The 7ft high giant elk died out during the last ice age.