Here's one for the greenies. Churchill is small town up on Hudson Bay in Canada. In winter when the bay freezes over, the polar bears used to come to town looking for food. Maybe they still do? Anyway, these furry critters are not quite as cute as they look in your local zoo when encountered roaming up the main street as one staggers back to the car from the pub.
So, in the interests of conservation of both sides of the potential food-chain, the rangers would hit them with tranquillizer darts and somehow get them into cages. I never saw that part. When they had four bears in four cages, they would load them onto our DC3 and accompany us to whatever frozen lake they wanted us to land on.
Somehow the rangers had the sleeping potion adjusted so that the bears would be awake, groggy, hungover and highly pissed-off by the time we landed. Getting the first one out wasn't too hard, as it was just a case of opening the cargo doors, raising the cage gate, prodding the bear in the bum and he/she would shamble out onto the ice and slope off. But then the cage had to be put out to make room for the next one to be slid aft to the door. Second bear out, second cage out etc until eventually there would be four bears out and three cages to be retrieved. By then the bears would be wide awake and sometimes they would take an interest in us as we hauled the cages back up. Meantime the ranger would sit on the wing with his dart gun to cover us, but our concern was how quick the darts would work. He also had a gun, but being a typical greenie, we did wonder whether he would actually use it.
They always tagged the bears and it was not unusual for a tagged bear to turn up back at Churchill within a couple of weeks, looking for another ride in the DC3.