Cricket's relationship with animals

This is an extremely hilarious piece I found on Cricinfo, , it lists weird moments when man animal and the quaint sport of cricket have come together.

Here are a few instances

Botham the Pig
By the Ashes tour of 1982-83, Ian Botham was beginning to fill out around the waist and was no longer the swing-bowling sylph of his heyday. That was good enough for the crowd at The Gabba, who smuggled a piglet in through the turnstiles (by stuffing an apple in its mouth and convincing the steward he was soon to be lunch), then released him on the outfield with "Botham" scrawled on one flank, and "Eddie" (in tribute to the equally rotund Eddie Hemmings) on the other.

That is legendary, how much ever people despise beer buzzling aussie cricket fans you must bow down to this gesture. Or atleast I will.

Snakes in the stands
When Pakistan visited India in 1999, Shiv Sena, a Hindu extremist movement, were less than happy with the idea of sporting contact between the two nations. In the build-up to the Test, they threatened to release poisonous snakes onto the outfield during the game. In response, the police hired 30 snake charmers to patrol the stands and be ready to pounce should the need arise.

Well, it just goes to show that the Mumbai police are always ahead of their enemies.

Hansie the rabbit
Peter McIntosh, an 11-year-old cricket nut from Northampton, had the misfortune of naming his new pet rabbit "Hansie" just three days before the match-fixing scandal erupted in April 2000. As Cronje Sr's name was dragged through the mud, his bunny namesake sat chewing lettuces and going about his rabbity business, oblivious to the fact that he was now the talk of the town. "We couldn't believe it," said Paul's mother, Elaine. "Our nine-year-old, Lauren, has been telling everybody that our rabbit has been arrested."

Moral of the story: Never name your rabbit after a cricketer.