In every issue of this fine rag my hack team of wannabe journalists and I tackle some of the most laughable criminal acts that have recently happened in our area. Then - if we're doing our job - we write about those crimes in a way that makes you chuckle, or at the very least helps you find something better to do than plan your Get Down Like It's 2008 Economic Apocalypse Party.

This week's column takes us to the wilds of Gig Harbor, where man and nature sometimes butt heads.

Enjoy. - Matt Driscoll

Anyone who follows this column knows we do very little of our own work ... if any. We borrow (read: steal) liberally from the reports of legitimate news organizations covering crime in the South Sound. More times than not, this means lifting stuff from the News Tribune's "Lights & Sirens" blog, and either Stacia Glenn, Adam Lynn or Stacey Mulick. Through hours (or, at least, an hour) spent online each week in research for Ragnet, it's their smiling, icon-size, website mug shots we've come to associate with actual crime reporting - the three of them, toothy smiles and all, sifting through the muck and delivering all the gory details on beatings, stabbings, muggings and swindlings in our area.

And then every once in a while they get a funny one. And it's like they don't even know what to do with themselves.

According to a post by Glenn on "Lights & Sirens," Gig Harbor residents say the Department of Fish and Wildlife nabbed a sizeable troublemaker last week when the agency, with the help of a dead turkey, some honey and a little vanilla, took down a black bear suspected of a livestock killing spree so prolific it deserves a Court TV special.

Glenn reports that Gig Harbor's Dale Ubben - who has property in the 3300 block of 22nd Avenue Northwest - first encountered the bear about a month ago, after the unfriendly beast killed three of his chickens.

Ubben, through conjecture inserted for pure entertainment purposes, sounds like a man who saw unbridled evil in the predator's heart, promising that the chicken massacre was only foreshadowing of terror to come.

Ubben says a few days later, the bear returned - this time with an appetite for turkey flesh.

"My son approached him and he jumped out of the fence and we knew he was back for more," Ubben tells the Trib, we can only assume doing a scary-bear face to illustrate.

After this horror, the authorities were called in. Ubben tells the Trib the Department of Fish and Wildlife set a trap Aug. 10, and by that afternoon the culprit had been apprehended. Tempting the beast with a dead turkey from the previous slaughter, some honey and a little vanilla, Ubben says he heard the trap snap shut at about 4 p.m. and hurried outside to bear witness to (get it?) a big-ass black bear caught in the trap's jaws.

Ubben says after an hour or so the Department of Fish and Wildlife arrived and removed the uninjured bear.

"They're taking him out and putting him far away so he won't be back," Ubben tells the Trib.

Or at least that's what he hopes. ... - Ted Ruxpin, Bear-Related Crime Correspondent