One member of Somerset Council described efforts to address a recent
freeze--thaw-sparked surge in pop-up (pop-down?) potholes
throughout Walton as 'trying to darn a pair of fishnet tights'. Matters were
made no easier when a road built over peat collapsed beneath a
pothole-filling lorry sent out by their chosen contractor.
Destabilising at the intended repair site, the Stabilised Pavements
lorry ended up at a 45-degree angle. The abandoned vehicle was later
recovered. It will take somewhat longer for the council to evaluate
how to complete the road repairs.
Discovering a grave thought to belong to legendary musketeer d'Artagnan
marked the highlight of Wim Dijkman's 40-year career as Maastricht
city archaeologist. It might also mark his undoing. Upon his
retirement, he chose to collect the bones himself from the research
lab analysing them in Germany, rather than trust them to the
postal service. He then failed to return them to the municipality's
custody, so heritage officers showed up at his home. There, Dijkman
told them that he'd stashed the remains with a friend.
De Nieuwe Ster Maastricht reports that he was held briefly in
police custody and that a criminal investigation has begun. Dijkman
justified his breaches of the Heritage Act as 'a matter of principle':
the city had meddled in his discovery, not granted him enough credit,
and not paid for his trip to Germany.
Police officers responding to firearm-incident reports from a petrol
station in Scottsbluff, Nebraska, found a parked pickup truck with
a hole blown through the passenger door from the inside. The causes
were sitting in the back: a shotgun that had been waiting with a live
round chambered and a restless dog that had moved from one side of the
seat bench to the other while the driver and passenger were outside.
On the other end of the gunshot was the upper arm of a motorist
who'd been waiting at a traffic light with her window rolled down.
Charges are likely, though not against the dog. State law prohibits
carrying a loaded shotgun in one's vehicle.
The new owners of a pickup truck in Kansas have to wait a while before
driving it home from the dealer's lot. Staff at the Olathe Ford
Lincoln sales facility explain that is has to remain in place because
a robin built her nest atop one of its tyres and laid eggs there
- 'this may be the only F-250 in America currently protected by the
Migratory Bird Treaty Act'. The nest remains under federal protection
and under employees' watchful eyes until the newly hatched chicks leave
under their own power.
In other bird news, the Best Friends Animal Sanctuary in Kanab, Utah,
took on the challenge of saving a juvenile great horned owl found
inside a cement mixer. Staff gave the anaesthetised bird 20-minute
daily baths to remove the encrusted concrete from its face, chest, and
right wing, but replacing its damaged feathers proved trickier, with
supervisor Bart Richwalski saying that 'other wildlife rehabilitators
[...] had never heard of an owl falling into concrete before'. The
sanctuary's team obtained training in how to replace raptor feathers
with adhesive after carefully studying the bird's individual feathers
over time. A deceased young owl from another wildlife-rescue centre
provided the donor feather, and four personnel provided steady hands
for the 90-minute surgery.
After a decibel meter proved the owl's flight to be silent enough
for life in the wild, the bird was rejoined the outside world.
In further animal news from Utah, we have 25 million honey bees. In a truck-spill incident, 480 hives became stranded amid high heat in Parleys Canyon. Fire crews from Millcreek came to the rescue with their hoses. While mechanics repaired the semi-articulated lorry, Unified Fire Authority crews misted the trailer to keep the bees 'cool, calm, and safe in the heat'. I am pleased to report that this was a no-sting operation.
A
transport mishap that took place last week in Tennessee delivered
anything but a damp squib. When a fire of unknown origin ignited
inside a trailer hauling fireworks along Interstate 75, spectators
watched for several minutes as pyrotechnics shot off in various
directions. Traffic was stopped in both directions while Chattanooga
and other fire crews converged to extinguished the blaze.
Estonian wildlife officials have concluded their investigation of
bicyclist Raido's report of being attacked by a bear near the village
of Väike-Maarja. By his account, backed by the Rakvere Hunting Club,
he sustained only a paw-print on his biscuits and rips to his jacket,
thanks to a family honking their car horn. He gave local papers no
physical e vidence, though, and mentioned trauma-based plans to burn
the jacket.
In addition, passenger Kaisa Hansar-Aas states that the family
saw no bear, merely a man bearing signs of heavy intoxication. After
being roused at the roadside, where he'd been lying with Russian music
blaring from his mobile phone, he pointed out invisible claw marks on
his arm and shambled off. In response, Raido claims that, while 'I
had had a little' earlier, he was quite sober when the bear jumped on
his back.
The animal in our next story seems rather more real: a porcupine that
residents of Krzywaczka, Poland, noticed wandering around a heavily
child-centred residential in the evening. After pinning down the animal's
location, responding Myślenice police officers remained on guard while
finding and summoning a local exotic-animal expert with the necessary
experience and equipment.
When the expert arrived, special transport cage at the ready, he did
a double take: the animal turned out to be his own pet porcupine,
which the police report 'had likely chewed through a fence post and
escaped the property on its own'.
Others, in contrast, seek out enclosed areas, as in the case of a
driver handling early-morning food deliveries in downtown Sydney.
While eating his own meal, from McDonald's, behind the wheel, this
21-year-old Frenchman reversed his SUV into the Archibald Fountain, in
Hyde Park. The rear wheels ended up in the fountain's pool, with the
surrounding stonework supporting the rest of the vehicle. When
officers arrived, 'strangely, he was still eating Macca's there',
according to Police Inspector Anderson Lessing, who reports that the
young man is to be charged with negligent driving.
Perhaps the top driver in the getting-stuck competition, however, is a
Wisconsin motorist whose way was blocked by a 'road closed' barrier at
the Milwaukee County interchange of Interstate 41 and National Avenue.
The obvious solution was to move this to the side and continue driving
the pickup truck along the road... until it became nearly submerged in
freshly poured concrete. Wisconsin Department of Transportation road
crews used heavy machinery to rescue the vehicle while the police
looked on, ready to further cement the effects of the driver's
unwillingness to adhere to signs.
In this Clippings set's final item about motorists, a Palm Beach
County, Florida, police officer stopped a woman for contravening state
laws against manual operation of a hand-held device behind the wheel.
When the officer told her that he'd seen a device in her right hand,
she pointed out her lack of a right hand and asked whether he'd like
to 'just call this a day'. He responded in the negative, since 'you
had a hand up manipulating a phone; with the right hand perhaps not,
but...', and he printed out a violation notice, letting her proceed on
her way. He decided to call it a day after she posted the body-camera
footage to TikTok. Prosecutors have dropped the case.
On a school-organised trip to Germany, a 15-year-old pupil from Amsterdam's Alasca secondary school ventured out on his own to explore the town of Kehl during the night. The police believe that he climbed onto a train parked at a marshalling yard to capture a photograph. What he did catch was a powerful shock from the electrical lines overhead, which left him with life-threatening burns. The youth, identified as Rayan, was airlifted to a specialist hospital, where he remained unconscious at last report. All the others on the trip returned to Amsterdam early, by more conventional means.
Pennsylvania's Hollywood Casino called in the state police to escort a jackpot-winner from the property and file trespassing charges. When this 69-year-old Asbury, New Jersey, woman tried to claim her fruit-machine winnings, personnel checking her name against the exclusion list saw that she had requested a lifetime ban from Pennsylvania's casinos. It is unclear how much money they'd received from her since she formally requested withdrawal of all gaming privileges in 2019, but the Council of Compulsive Gambling of Pennsylvania is more than clear that self-excluded gamblers are prohibited from collecting winnings.
As a United Airlines flight neared the halfway mark on its way from New Jersey to Spain's Palma de Mallorca, flight attendants asked the passengers to turn off their Bluetooth devices. This was followed by announcements along the lines of 'this little joke is ruining it for everyone'. The plane then made a U-turn - 'to address a potential security concern' in the airline's words. Words from air-traffic control staff clarified matters: 'They have to inspect the whole aircraft, including the cargo area, [and] passengers have to evacuate' and 'There's a security detail out there - someone had a Bluetooth speaker and they named it a certain four-letter word'. A teenager had attached the label 'BOMB' to a Bluetooth speaker.