After fixing the sign that advertises a Wilmington, Illinois, petrol station's current prices, a maintenance worker identified a breakage in something else: the mechanical lift between him and the ground 40 metres below. While he cooled his heels inside the sign, occasionally giving a thumbs-up to helicopter-based news crews and a police drone, city fire crews - whose ladders top out at 30.5 metres - arranged to have a basket-equipped boom crane roll in from a nearby county under the necessary state-police escort. After a five-hour wait, the worker safely reached terra firma.
In Gold Hill, Colorado, Patrick Sullivan's sleep was repeatedly
interrupted by blasts from a neighbour's car horn throughout the
![[IMG: the bear behind the wheel]](images/rude_neighbour.jpg)
night. However, his neighbours had had the same experience. In the
morning, locals traced the sound to the offending SUV and the rude
![[IMG: a closer look at the bear behind the wheel]](images/rude_neighbour_close.jpg)
individual within: a bear trapped in the front seat. Residents
attached a long rope to one of the doors, opening it from a distance
to free the animal. Though the bear caused damage to the side of the
vehicle, the SUV-owner at least has proof that the driver's-side
air-bag system works.
The mode of transportation starring in our next item is boats.
Finding all the doors of a client's vessel at a Sausalito, California,
harbour, locked, yacht captain Bill Aubrey chased off the trespasser
responsible, Elaine Christina Forbes, whom he later connected with
unauthorised lodging on a second boat and with theft of a woman's
clothing there. Forbes, who has a floating home of her own, is no
newcomer to the waterfront: she was director of the Port of San
Francisco for nine years.
The intrusions occurred about three weeks after Forbes, 52, took
office as Sausalito city manager. Her arrest and booking at the Marin
County jail occurred two days after a closed city-council meeting
approved a two-month leave of absence for her for unspecified reasons.
Near the peak of Ben Nevis, Scotland's Christina Bluhme noticed that the youngest member of the party, five-year-old Tokyo, seemed to be suffering from 'a spinal thing or a disc that had slipped because of the climb', affecting her hind quarters. As Tokyo, a 24-kilo black Labrador, began slipping into and out of consciousness, the family attempted to carry her back down the mountain. Stymied by heavy rains, however, they ended up summoning the Lochaber Mountain Rescue Team, whose volunteers had just dealt with an emergency nearby. Once Tokyo had been stretchered down the mountain, veterinarians discovered the root of her ailment: consuming significant amounts of cannabis, likely from an 'edible' dropped on the trail. A puff of gas from the now-recovered animal's above-mentioned hind quarters confirmed the diagnosis.
After that hike, it's time to board a bus, the 302 waiting in Kensal
Rise, north-west London. That's where a laundry bag protruding from
the luggage bay obstructed the path of a mother with a pram. When the
driver pushed the bag out of the way, it began 'chirping and jumping'.
Within was a well-concealed female marmoset and some pieces of
apple.
The Metroline team placed the monkey - now called Oyster - in a
dark, cool part of the bus station and contacted the RSPCA, whose
investigator Clare Dew said that this dehydrated, understandably
terrified animal is unlikely to be the only one 'dumped' in light of
new legislation that requires pet primates to be microchipped. She
added that the incident was at least timed propitiously: only hours
after the RSPCA's efforts to find a partner for a sanctuary's lone male
marmoset had fallen through.
For another tale of animals and transport, we turn to security workers at Schiphol Airport, where a Canadian woman attempted the subtle act of smuggling a brassiere-borne ball python onto an aircraft. She explained to enforcement officers that she'd rescued the snake from her hotel in Amsterdam. 'We highly doubt that' stated the Netherlands Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority. Even so, one isn't allowed to 'simply take protected animals [...] on a trip, not even if you found them on the street'. Their inspectors drove the snake to a shelter and filed a police report against the woman.
When the Atlantic Seafood Sauce Company closed up shop in
Newfoundland, they did not clear out that shop: a facility housing
100+ tanks of fish sauce. The roof blew off, a storm knocked out a
wall, and the contents continued to ferment, for 20-plus years, to the
annoyance of the 300 noses in the community of St. Mary's.
The residents' crusade, led by volunteer mayor Steve Ryan, who
worked at the plant as a teenager in 1990, is finally bearing fruit:
while the national government 'forgot about us', the province is now
bringing in suction trucks to drain the vats, after which their
contents will be mixed with peat moss to absorb the smell of what Ryan
terms 'the worst rotted fish you ever smelled in your lifetime, times
100' and placed in a covered pit lined with high-density polyethylene.
The operation, which the contractor describes as 'not fall[ing] under
any of the standard classifications', will cost tax-payers a
seven-digit sum.
In the first of two pole-accident stories, David Cifaldi slipped
while hiking with two friends near the peak of Montana's largest
mountain, Granite Peak. He ended up with his 112 cm trekking pole
protruding from his back. Since helicopter rescue consumes significant
public resources and Cifaldi as a wound-care nurse was 'pretty
confident' that the steel-tipped pole hadn't breached his chest wall,
he elected to 'self-rescue' by returning to a marked trail and hiking
the 16 km back down the mountain while keeping the county rescue team
informed of his progress.
Six hours later, the three hikers arrived at the local clinic, where
medics declared the 32-year-old Ciflaldi in need of more advanced
treatment. They got back in their truck and drove to Billings, where
Cifaldi's co-workers removed the pole and bandaged him up.
When a colleague mentioned that he was giving away a pole-dancing
pole, Asha Gilbert jumped at the opportunity. She and a friend
promptly installed it in her flat, and three days later she was
spinning along to a pole-dancing workout tutorial. She then jumped at
something else - the pole coming loose from where tension alone had
held it in place between ceiling and floor. It hit a fire sprinkler.
Gilbert has had to move to a different flat, write off much of her
furniture, and deal with a 'very very cool and understanding'
downstairs neighbour. She has given up pole dancing, at least for
now.
![[IMG: all seems fine]](images/polefail_1.jpg)
![[IMG: the pole has slipped]](images/polefail_2.jpg)
![[IMG: the flood has begun]](images/polefail_3.jpg)
![[IMG: the aftermath is clear]](images/polefail_4.jpg)