Free Republic

PITTSBURGH -- It's just before 7 p.m. on a frigid December night, and already the Allegheny Elks Lodge No. 339 on the city's North Side is filling up quickly -- both the long bar and the tables in the adjacent hall. There's a woman collecting for a 50-50 raffle. (You may as well give in; she won't take no for an answer.) Elks volunteers young and old are manning the bar and the kitchen, where the special tonight is a gourmet grilled cheese (black forest honey ham, Gouda cheese and bacon). Upstairs a six-lane sparkling white and red art deco...

Things you don't expect to happen on the golf course. Christer Sjögren had an unusual experience on Karlstad golf course when instead of an eagle or a birdie, he ran into an elk calf. When the young elk started chasing him, he ran, all while his friends laughed at him. His friend Tony Swahn, who shot the video, told The Local it had gone viral in Sweden. "It has really spread," he said. Sweden has seen violent elk attacks in the past, however in this case everything worked out well in the end, after the young animal slowly walked off...

Swedish school children fled their woodwork class on Monday when an elk broke in through a window and reacted violently when it found it couldn't get out. Monday afternoon was no ordinary school day for students at Sörgårdsskolan, in Mölndal, western Sweden. Shortly after lunch, an elk calf entered though one of the classroom windows. The junior high school pupils beat a hasty retreat. "The elk felt cloistered in there in the confined space," regional police spokesman Thomas Fuxborg told The Local. "So when the children had locked themselves into the adjoining paint supply room, they could hear the elk...

Parishioners in central Sweden got a shock earlier this week when the female pastor and newly licenced hunter conducting the town's annual "elk hunt sermon" appeared wearing some unusual headwear.This week, tens of thousands of elk hunters have decamped to the Swedish wilderness in hopes of snagging their own king of the forest as Sweden's elk hunting kicked off on Monday. Keeping with a long-standing tradition, parishioners filled the pews at the Tveta Church in Värmland County on the eve of the hunt to hear the annual "elk hunt sermon". And it didn't take long for the 30 to 40...

Conducting ceremonies to properly and respectfully retire American flags is a long-standing responsibility accorded Boy Scout troops. On Sunday, the members of Boy Scout Troop 146 in El Sobrante will take part in that tradition. The ceremony, the first in recent memory held by the troop, will take place at 11 a.m. in the back parking lot of the Richmond Elks Lodge at 3931 San Pablo Dam Road in El Sobrante. Elks Lodge No. 1251 is partnering with the Scouts to hold the ceremony to retire U.S. flags no longer fit for display. Anyone who has a flag is welcome...

Drunk elks attack police Last weekend police in Sibbhult, in the north of Skåne, were called out by staff at the Skogsbrynet old people's home to deal with a bunch of drunks. But it was not residents who had had one sherry too many that was the problem - it was elks. At first the police managed to drive away the elks, a mother and her calf, who had filled themselves up on fermented apples. But then the Swedish elks began displaying some Dutch courage and turned on the police. Officers were forced to call in a hunter with a...

<p>The formal name is Keystone Lodge No. 6 of the Improved Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks of the World.</p> <p>Locals use the shorthand name, Black Elks.</p> <p>The fraternal organization's lodge at Highland and Burton avenues looks a bit run down, like other properties in Washington's Highland-Ridge neighborhood, and the financially strapped club is fighting for survival. Behind the dwindling membership and delinquent real estate taxes, however, is a proud story ripe for telling at the start of Black History Month.</p>

Norwegian specialists in the field of environmental protection warn that there are drunk elks wandering around the woods of Norway in connection with the snowless weather. Many animals suffer from intoxication from eating over-fermented fruit. Apples that fall down from apple trees are then covered with a thick layer of snow and elks can not reach the fruit. However, this winter has had almost no snow in Norway, so elks simply eat tons of the fruit and enjoy its effects.