Higgs Raccoon's stories

The Honey Cooler, the noir film with a hard-boiled detective, furries, and Lucha Libre wrestlers, debuts on November 7 at the Hi-Dive in Denver, Colorado.

The film, covered previously on Flayrah, is described as a "lurid tale of animal-costumed sex and private dicks", and tells the tale of a "washed-up detective who gets hired to track down a missing executive and turns up all sorts of high weirdness".

Writer-director Ryan Demers will be in attendance at the premier, along with most of the cast and crew. Admission is free.

Two fursuits, built by Temperance of Komickrazi Studios, have appeared in a music video for Australian heavy-metal band "DZ Deathrays". The video, for the song "Cops Capacity", depicts two anthropomorphic German Shepherds in police uniforms, abusing their authority.

Calgary-based costumer Temperance was contacted in mid-August and commissioned to build the 'two "Angry looking" German Shepherds who were going to get into lots of trouble'. Despite being given only a week to complete the task, Temperance was excited by the idea of her work appearing in a music video, and filled the order for the partial suits (handpaws, heads and tails), which were sent to the Hayes Brothers Studio in New York City for filming.

Old-school furry artist Mitch Beiro has been arrested after police found that files depicting the sexual exploitation of minors had been shared online from his home.

Beiro, 47, worked as a guard for a security company in Tucson, Arizona. In the furry fandom, Beiro's artwork has been published in Huzzah, Wild, and several other publications. A frequent attendee of furry conventions, he was a guest of honor at ConFurence 11 (2000), and married Minerva Mink at a joke wedding during ConFurence 12.

Tucson detectives started an investigation on Beiro in December 2011, as part of a wider investigation into the online sharing of child sexual abuse images via peer-to-peer internet networks.

The police served a search warrant on his home on October 3, and found "various computer related items, which contained thousands of files depicting the sexual exploitation of minors". He is being charged with 15 counts of sexual exploitation of a minor.

During the investigation, detectives also found that he was part of an unreported child molestation case in California.

Update (19 Feb): Mitch has been sentenced to prison and probation

"RATS!", a satirical rat-themed role-playing game, is seeking sponsorship on the crowd-funding site Indiegogo. In the game, players will take on the roles of intelligent rats who are engaged in a holy war against modern humanity, other animals, each other, and "numerous inanimate objects".

RATS! will be based on the third-edition d20 system. Rat characters advance by spending experience points to gain new abilities and mutations, and by growing in size. The rules are being developed by Uri Kurlianchik and Stan Levi. Kurlianchik is a game writer and storyteller from Israel, whose works have been published by Wizards of the Coast, Paizo Publishing, Mongoose, Bull Spec, and Brain Harvest. Levi is an artist, illustrator, and animator.