Thanks to Jaid for sending this in.
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"Plenty of people pooh-poohed the idea, but Japan Railways persisted and managed to make a small train line safer and at the same time prove that lions are kings of the beasts, according to Weekly Playboy (4/1).

"JR's Kisei Line running along the Kii Peninsula in western Japan has for years been plagued by accidents involving trains slamming into deer grazing on the tracks -- 202 in last year alone.

"Eggheads at the Tokushima forestry research center had conducted tests that found deer shied away from saplings that had been coated in lion dung. JR asked a safari park to supply it with some lion deposits [1] and immediately mixed them with water to make a paste they liberally spread along the most dangerous section of the Kisei Line tracks.

"'On Nov. 13 last year, they spread 40 kilograms of the paste along a 400-meter stretch of tracks where most of the accidents involving deer had taken place. The results were astounding,' a reporter for a local daily tells Weekly Playboy. 'Ever since the line got into the old proverbial, there hasn't been a single accident involving deer."