Elephants fed giant shots of vodka as freeze grips Russia

Elephants fed giant shots of vodka as big freeze grips Russia

By Andrew Osborn in Moscow
Published: 19 January 2006

Animals at zoos across Russia are being given shots, or in some cases buckets, of vodka to keep them warm as temperatures in the European part of the country plunged towards an exceptional minus 40C.

In the ancient town of Yaroslavl, 100 miles north of Moscow, a travelling circus said it had been forced to start giving its trio of Indian elephants vodka mixed with water in buckets as the mercury dipped.

In Lipetsk, where meteorologists recorded temperatures of minus 32C, the zoo's contingent of macaques was being fortified with cheap French table wine three times a day and in other zoos camels, wild boars and reindeer were being given regular shots of vodka to stave off the chill.

People who clutched their mobile phones to their ears for too long have been taken to hospital with frostbite; homeless people have frozen to death where they slumped and some of Moscow's famously bright lights have had to be temporarily turned off as the city consumes record amounts of electricity and moves to selective rationing.

With the temperature hovering around minus 30C yesterday, Moscow, a city of 12 million people, was eerily quiet with locals saying they had not experienced such extreme cold for half a century. The coldest temperature recorded in Moscow, of minus 42C, was recorded in 1940 and experts said that the current Arctic conditions could last until the end of the month, with the temperature steadily dropping towards minus 40C as the week progresses.

Moscow's infamous traffic jams vanished into the icy air as people left their cars at home and shops, bars and restaurants saw custom plunge.

With nostril hair freezing on impact with the outside air and ice quickly forming on eye lashes, pavements were also less crowded than usual and foyers of metro stations were crowded with the dispossessed who were, exceptionally, allowed to sleep in the subway system overnight.

The extreme cold - which is fierce even by Russian standards - had serious human consequences. Russian media said the number of people to die from hypothermia in Moscow since October had shot up to 109, with at least 24 people dying of exposure in the past 24 hours. In the Volga region a minibus on its way to Moscow crashed through the ice of a frozen river as it tried to cross, killing six passengers. The cold caused concrete road bridges to crack and some villages in remote regions were left without heat or light.

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