Mystery of the Howling Wolf

Every now and then, and I didn’t succeed in determining when, there’s a wolf howling through the speakers of my Powerbook. First time that occurred, it could be because I was visiting some site with a flash enabled commercial. The second time, I didn’t want to search where the sound came from. But after five times, I became suspicious and wondered whether there could be some ugly spy/ad-ware thingy residing on my computer. So I asked Google… and there it is. On Macworld, an article shows it is the Dashboard widged “Flappie“, which is described by Apple:

Displays the current weather conditions in your local area. These conditions can help determine the flapper’s mood and even if he lives or dies. Day and night also cycle in the flapper’s world. The longer you keep the flapper alive, the better chance it will have to evolve.

That it howled, wasn’t said before… Well, at least I know it isn’t spyware/adware. Thus I can continue assuming I’m quite safe on my Mac 🙂