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Real-life fairytale villains haunt Berlin this winter

Jörg Luyken
Jörg Luyken - [email protected]
Real-life fairytale villains haunt Berlin this winter
A wolf has been spotted on the Berlin city outskirts. File: DPA

In west Berlin an old woman has been trying to poison people with sweets, while on the capital’s outskirts a wolf is prowling through the forests.

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While it may seem like episodes from Grimms' fairy tales, two news stories caught the attention in the German capital on Friday for their eerie, perhaps malevolent nature.

In the suburb of Spandau, police are looking for a woman who has been handing out Christmas cakes laced with poison, reports daily tabloid BZ.

The lady, described as being around 50 years old, thin and with dark hair with wisps of grey, offered a bag of enticing treats to a Turkish man and his female companion.

The poisoned cakes. Photo: Polizei Berlin

Soon after they ate some of the biscuits though, the pair became sick and went to a doctor. A blood test revealed that the same chemicals as those found in rat poison were present in their bloodstream.

Luckily the dose was not high enough to cause lasting damage to their health.

Police advised in a tweet against taking food offered for free.

He'll huff and he'll puff

Meanwhile a wolf has been photographed inside the motorway ring around the city, the first time this has ever happened, reports Tagesspiegel.

A hunter used a night vision camera to snap the wolf in the Brandenburg forest as it was about to pick up some apples from beneath the trunk of a tree.

Wolves are being spotted more and more often across Germany. But they are especially common in the east where they cross over from forests in Poland and the Czech Republic.

Kay-Uwe Hartleb the voluntary wolf commissioner in the area said he thought it was a young animal due to the size of its legs.

“Young wolves don’t have a map in their heads. When they sense that the way they’re going is becoming too crowded then they turn round,” he reassured the Berlin daily.

But local hunter Wolfgang Brückner was more concerned by the development.

“They are coming ever closer to humans,” he warned.

“The population is on the rise. They go wherever they find wild boar. But I’m asking myself what happens when they don’t find any more boar to eat."

Let’s just hope there are no old women living in Brandenburg forests who are paid visits by granddaughters wearing hooded red coats.

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