Following the sounds of noisy trespassers, Kayla Burress ventured onto the veranda of her Ave Mara, Florida, home. Finding two bloodied intruders engaged in a vicious fight against a backdrop of destroyed screen mesh, she knew that alligator mating season had arrived. The two reptiles continued thrashing about, with one biting the other's tail before a licensed trapper was able to arrive and relocate them.
Our next story too involves reptiles - in somewhat larger quantities. Authorities at Bangkok's main airport noticed a 19-year-old Taiwanese woman moving her body strangely while she was preparing to depart for Taipei. Her odd motions stemmed from smuggling Indian star tortoises, a vulnerable species sold as exotic pets. She had 'used adhesive tape to immobilise the animals, packed them into cloth bags, and attached them to her body', according to Thailand's wildlife-conservation department. One tortoise had died. The remaining 29 were taken into both evidence and care.
Someone in the departures area of Schiphol Airport alerted customs officers to an exotic species spotted in the wilds of the loo: poison-dart frogs next to the toilets. Investigating, agents found the blue, black, and yellow amphibians described, likely left behind by a smuggler who'd ended up with cold feet before security screening. According to Jeugdjournaal, they also found a plastic box of six more frogs, discarded in a bin just outside the washroom along with several containers of life-sustaining moss.
A California-internal Southwest Airlines flight was delayed for nearly 1.5 hours because of an opposite of wildlife: the 120 cm, 30 kg non-living passenger for whom Eily Ben-Abraham had purchased an aeroplane ticket in the approved manner. An aisle seat had been assigned in error to his large carry-on items, a humanoid robot named Bebop. After clearing of this hurdle, the flight crew ascertained that Bebop's lithium battery was larger than airline policy permits. It was removed before takeoff. Ben-Abraham's employer, Elite Event Robotics, shipped a new one by overnight courier so that Bebop could appear at Digestive Disease Week as scheduled and are now attempting to recover the confiscated one.
Another carry-on item deemed potentially lethal was the Oscar that documentarian and former Russian schoolteacher Pavel Talankin passes around classrooms during his talks about principles and principals. Stating that the statuette could function as a weapon, TSA personnel in New York rejected a Lufthansa agent's offer to hold it throughout Talankin's flight to Germany. Therefore, it was placed in a cardboard box as checked baggage - which then vanished. After frantic searching uncovered the award, relieved airline representatives stated that 'an internal review of how this occurred is currently still ongoing'.
Somewhat different flight-related issues affected arrivals at a primary school in Cheatham County, Tennessee, where cars and school buses found an unexpected vehicle blocking the car park: a helicopter. The medical-evacuation chopper had made an emergency landing there after the crew identified damaged from its tail rotor having whacked into the empty gurney that had carried its passenger. Traffic temporarily snarled further as a second helicopter arrived on the scene to collect the patient.
Family cat Gizzy went missing from Gareth Knowler's garden in East
Malling, Kent. Later in the afternoon, a neighbour found the
microchipped feline and took her to the RSPCA centre in Leybourne.
![[IMG: Gizzy seemingly fine on the day before her death]](images/Gizzy.jpg)
Despite reassurances, in person and later by phone, that they would
hold the cat for a week and attempt to contact the registered owners,
they managed only the latter - sort of. They left a phone message.
When Knowler's wife Lucy rang back after her work day to arrange to
collect Gizzy, the centre reported that vets, after failing to reach
the family, concluded that the frail 19-year-old cat had 'likely been a
stray for some time'. Lucy's explanation that Gizzy was recovering
from an illness came too late: she'd been euthanised.
Shocked by the speed of events, Lucy summed up: 'My cat was home at
lunchtime. By teatime she was dead.' The photo here shows Gizzy on
the day before her death.
In response to a long-term colleague's post-promotion perceived
arseholery and refusal to wear a lab coat and goggles, University
of Wisconsin research scientist Makota Kuroda, 41, undertook
dispute-resolution procedures. The first of these led to a peculiar
odour from the workmate's bottled water. Testing prompted two days
later by an identical smell in his shoes found paraformaldehyde levels
'so high the test strips were not able to report an accurate value'.
Kuroda then confessed that he'd chosen to turn his belief that
'bad things happen to bad people' into reality so had asked ChatGPT
about suitable chemical quantities for making his close friend 'feel
bad' without any danger involved. Kuroda has been placed on
administrative leave and faces charges of recklessly endangering
safety and of tampering with a household product 'with the intent to
kill, injure or otherwise endanger [...] health'.
Wisconsin brings us another clever scheme also, this one the brainchild of Outagamie County Recycling and Solid Waste. They have posted a local speed-limit sign declaring that drivers should adhere to the limit of 17.3 miles per hour. No, this is not an overly precise conversion from SI units. The centre's Jordan Hiller explains that the aim is precisely for people to do a double-take: the waste-haulers, contractors, and area residents traversing the premises every day should break 'that "autopilot" feeling we can all fall into when driving familiar routes'.
A woman in Canada encountered a surprise at the end of a highly
familiar route. Arriving at her Manitoba home after an outing with
friends, Christine Keilback disappeared. Looking down, her friends
![[IMG: Heilback in the hole]](images/holeymoley.jpg)
saw the 58-year-old woman's head and shoulders poking up from a hole
in the ground. Unable to climb out, she waved to passers-by and posed
![[IMG: Heilback in the hole]](images/holeymoley2.jpg)
for photos while waiting for the Winnipeg Fire Paramedic Service to
arrive with a harness and winch.
Though she'd initially worried that a sinkhole had opened outside her
residence, city officials explained that manhole covers had been
removed from two catch-basins beside the road.
In Freising, Germany, three dogs leapt through the door of a house receiving a scheduled delivery in late 2024. Scrambling for cover, the delivery driver jumped onto the bonnet of the residents' Porsche Cayenne, parked near the door. Several months later, the car-owner submitted photos of scratches and dents to the bonnet, accompanying a demand for 2,700 euros to cover the damage. With the driver and the delivery company refusing to pay, the case went to court. The court has now issued a decision stating that even non-aggressive pet dogs should be kept under control, since barking at and running toward someone is ample cause for a flight response.
The Straits Times reports on a French teenager who treated social media to a video of himself licking a straw from a shopping centre's orange-juice vending machine in Singapore and placing the straw back in the compartment before closing it. Vending-machine operator IJooz sanitised the machine, binned all 500 straws it held, and filed a complaint against Didier Gaspard Owen Maximilien, 18. He will face mischief and public-nuisance charges after a trip abroad that is required for his graduation from a local business school, and IJooz will now use individually packaged straws.
For shenanigans of a different sort, we turn to Jamie Ernesto
Alvarez-Gonzalez, a Mexican man with a long-expired US visa who
sought immigration officers' attention. Driving a model of black Ford
favoured by immigration officers - complete with a 'Border Patrol'
![[IMG: License-plate frame proclaiming this a ferderal track]](images/ferd.png)
decal on the windscreen, a large (non-functioning) radio antenna on
the roof, and a licence-plate frame sporting a misspelt
mischaracterisation of the vehicle's nature - he led federal
immigration officers the wrong way when they were trying to reach the
scene of enforcement missions. In addition, he caused one agent in
California to abort his mission in the mistaken belief that others
were already responding. Alvarez-Gonzalez has admitted also to
impersonating a Border Patrol agent and illegally possessing firearms.
Traffic cameras in New York captured a distinctive black Pontiac Trans Am with the California number plate 'KNIGHT' speeding in a Brooklyn school zone. 'We want to find out who this Knight Rider guy is [...]. Is this from a museum, is this just a guy that built this car as a hobby? And it looks pretty damn accurate.' These words come from Jim Wojdyla, marketing director of Illinois's Volo Museum, which holds a replica of the classic KITT prop from 1980s television and has received tickets for six such traffic violations since late 2024. Wojdyla, who wonders how the museum, which has never registered its exhibit for the roads, became legally linked to this number plate, has posted online 'Does anyone have Hasselhoff's number? He owes us $50!!!!'.
S![[IMG: Some of the students helping out]](busness1.png)
![[IMG: More helping out]](busness2.png)
hortly after a full school bus departed from Mississippi's Hancock
Middle School and joined a four-line highway, its driver slumped over
behind the wheel. 'I saw that the bus was veering off to the side,
then I grabbed the wheel' recounted sixth-grader Jackson Casnave. A
second young passenger, Darrius Clark, struggled with the air brakes
as the runaway vehicle picked up speed - 'whenever I clicked the
brakes, it about threw me out the windshield'. Another
middle-schooler worked to rouse the driver, 46-year-old Leah Taylor,
and administered the asthma medicine she'd been attempting to take.
Two others helped by using their mobile phones, one ringing the
emergency services and the other contacting school-district staff.
The bus safely came to a halt, and the students were conveyed home
without further incident.