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The bars most of us frequent don’t have a theme aside from “cold beer here” and don’t attempt fashion statement other than perhaps a “wipe boots before entering” sign. They’re just bars. Places to hang out, grab a beer and shoot the bull. And if they’ve got dead animals hanging on the wall you can be sure we can appreciate or – at the very least – correctly identify what they are.

Not so in New York. For the hipsters who inhabit our cultural capital, dead animals on the bar wall are merely ironic statements of urban cool, and if no one actually knows what those animals are, just call it a moose. Everyone else does.

“Woman sues lower East Side restaurant after moosehead falls off wall and knocks her on head”

Beware of falling moose! A Manhattan woman has sued a lower East Side restaurant, claiming she was conked in the head by a moosehead that fell off a wall. Raina Kumra , 32, sued White Slab Palace, a Scandinavian-inspired hipster hangout on Delancey St., for an unspecified amount, charging the owners were “grossly careless” in mounting the taxidermy wildlife. _”It was the bar’s fault,” Kumra told the Daily News Tuesday. “I was injured and in an embarrassing way.” The 150-pound moosehead with antlers spanning over 3 feet was the centerpiece of the restaurant’s back party room. In a suit filed in Manhattan Supreme Court, Kumra said she was standing under the moosehead about 1 a.m. on Oct. 4 when it came dislodged and crowned her.

Obviously (see picture) the offending animal isn’t a moose, but a caribou. How an animal so obviously not a moose can be misidentified by pretty much the entire world is a good example of how quickly stupidity can go viral.

First it’s misidentified by the bar owner who put it up, then by the patron upon whose head it landed, then by said patron’s lawyer, then by the (not one but two!) NY Post reporters who wrote the story, then by the wire services and blogs who picked up the story. So now, a few days after the story was first published, Google “stuffed moose attack” and you will discover tha New York City’s killer moose has gone worldwide. Almost.

The one lone voice of reason in this tale is that of New Jersey taxidermist Richard Santomauro, who appears in the very last paragraph of the original NY Post story.

“Meanwhile, Richard Santomauro , owner of Wildlife Taxidermy in Wall, N.J. , insisted Kumra was not hit by a moosehead. “That’s a caribou,” he said after viewing a photo of the stuffed head.”

“That’s a caribou.” Simple. To-the-point. Absolutely correct. And completely ignored._