Hampshire police today announced that they were involved in an intensive manhunt in a strategy designed to apprehend the notorious Hampshire Horse Tickler.
This strategy principally involved an appeal for information from the public, coupled with a reward of seventy one pounds sterling.
The Horse Tickler has been conducting his, or possibly even her despicable nocturnal activities for months, thus far evading detection by Hampshire's finest detectives.
The Modus Operandi has been confirmed as a diminutive figure entering into fields where horses are kept, and rubbing them vigorously about the ribs until the unfortunate creatures are reduced to quivering heaps of uncontrollable laughter.
Several horses are said to have been afflicted.
Local farmer and horsey type chap, Mr Serious Jethro, told us:
'I'm the only one what's seen him. He's a little chap who wears a long coat and a pointy hat. I was woken by a sound of hysterical whinnying, and when I went to investigate, I found this little diminutive chap in a long coat and pointy hat tickling my prize stallion about the ribs. The poor horse was reduced to hysterics. When I challenged the little fellow he sped off across the fields giggling in a high pitched girly sort of way.
'The horse,' he added, 'was uninjured by the ordeal, but had bad sides from laughing.'
At which point he frowned, as if to illustrate some kind of point which was lost on us.
At which point, a neighbouring farmer, Mr Nyles Vertebrae, interjected:
'It's not just horses he been tickling, there's been accounts of pigs, sheep, chickens, and even farmed ostriches reported. Oh and trout. Although that might be a bugger to prove.
'What with them livin' underwater an that.'
A spokesman for Hampshire Police said: 'Don't you have anything better to do? I mean, for God's sake,when did you ever hear an animal laugh? They're a lower life form you dope. For fuck's sake...'
More as we get it.
