Weird But True

[NJFFSA16]

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) - A Malaysian man earned almost
3,000 ringgit (US$790) and the title of best rat catcher by killing
1,175 of the rodents in three months with a slingshot.
The council in the northern city of Kota Bahru offered residents
1 ringgit (US$0.26) for each rat they killed as part of an campaign
to eradicate the vermin.
At the end of the three-month campaign, 43-year-old laborer
Ismail Hamzah had presented the council with 1,175 rat carcasses -
the vast majority of the 1,922 total handed in, the New Straits
Times newspaper reported Friday.
Ismail was paid the bounty for each rat and a first prize bonus
of 1,500 ringgit (US$395), the paper reported.
Ismail said he hunted rats and shot them with pebbles from a
slingshot made from a block of wood and rubber from a wheel tube
from his son's bicycle.

(Copyright 2004 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

[E40FDNYL35]

January 2, 2004 --The timing was a bit off, but the sentiment was real. Brian Shipwash was speared by his handlebars when his motorcycle crashed in Pilot Mountain, N.C. As he lay in the dirt with blood gushing from his gut, he stunned his biker girlfriend by popping the question. "I said something like, 'I know this is not the best time in the world, but will you marry me?' " Shipwash said. She said yes before Shipwash, 32, was rushed to the hospital to be sewed back up

[clipper]

There was a guy in our high school who had called the school to let a teacher who had been tormenting him that he couldn't take it anymore and had taken a bottle of pills. Of course the EMT's got there and rushed him to the hospital where he was unco-operative with the doctors who ended up pumping his stomache and administered charcoal. The stomache contents were analyzed immediately to see just what he had taken so the appropriate action couled be taken. It turns out he had swallowed 60 of his grand mothers multi vitamins thinking that they were her heart medication.

[NJFFSA16]

SANTA FE, N.M., Jan 2 (Reuters) - A New Mexico funeral home
owner received the surprise of his career when a man pronounced
dead at a hospital came back to life just before he was to be
embalmed.
Russell Muffley, the owner of Muffley Funeral Home in
Clovis, New Mexico, said he noticed Felipe Padilla breathing
when the man pronounced dead at a hospital was being
transferred to his facility on Wednesday. Padilla, 94, was
rushed back to the same hospital, but did not recover. He was
declared dead for a second time.
"When we were getting ready to move him from the stretcher
to the embalming table, we noticed signs of life," Muffley
said.
Padilla was breathing on his own but not speaking when
paramedics took him from the funeral home back to Plains
Regional Medical Center. He died a few hours later and was
taken back to the funeral home, where arrangements had already
been made.
Padilla will be buried next week.
"I have been doing this for 39 years and this has never
happened before," Muffley said.

Reut14:11 01-02-04

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January 6, 2004 --Helium balloons set off at an Oregon football game finally came down 22 hours later - and 900 miles away, in Nebraska. Dean Wittstruck found the balloons, marked, "Go Ducks!" and "Go Team!" in a field by his home in Martell. The balloons were apparently carried by a jet stream six miles above the ground.

[FlyingKiwi]

Now THAT would have anyone looking at the farm pond and wondering "What are those birds up to?"

[NJFFSA16]

MIAMI, Jan 6 (Reuters) - Three Florida fugitives scrambled
into an attic to elude police but surrendered when they found a
human skeleton in their hideaway, police said on Tuesday.
The two men and a woman were wanted on probation violation
charges and climbed into the attic to hide when police tracked
them to an apartment building in Daytona Beach on Monday,
police Sgt. Al Tolley said.
Police searched the apartment and noticed a hatch leading
to an attic above a second-story bedroom, and opened it. One of
the suspects called out, "Get me out of here. There's a dead
body up here," Tolley said.
The three were arrested and investigators were still trying
to identify the skeletal remains. The apartment's tenant told
police she had lived there about three months and had noted a
foul odor but could not locate the source.

[NJFFSA16]

Wild boar breaks into Berlin apartment
BERLIN - A wild boar searching for food broke into a Berlin
apartment and bit a man in the leg before fleeing back into the
woods, police said.
"The wild boar broke into the living room through a terrace
door and hid under a table," a police spokesman said. "When the
54-year-old resident tried to shoo the boar back out the door,
it went wild."
The man was treated in the hospital for his leg wound and
released on the same day. Police said the animal has not been
captured.
Environmentalists say several thousand wild boars, which
can weigh up to 330 pounds, live in the German capital and push
farther into the city when their food supplies run low.

[NJFFSA16]

Moroccan soldier keeps bride waiting for 24 years
RABAT, Morocco - After 24 years of engagement, a Moroccan
soldier named Abderrahim has married his bride. But he had an
excuse -- he was in jail deep in the Sahara desert.
"I was convinced she'd wait for me, I had blind confidence
in her since the first day we met," Abderrahim told 2M state
television, which did not disclose his last name.
Separatist guerrillas captured Abderrahim in 1979 during a
war for control of the Western Sahara territory and freed him
along with 300 of 900 remaining prisoners in November.
Abderrahim rushed home to wed his intended, Bahia, who knew
he had been captured but had had no news of him for six years.
"I never thought I had lost my husband," she said. "I knew
he'd come back one day. I never showed pain but hid it deep in
my heart."

[NJFFSA16]

$285,200 frog tunnel
BERLIN - Germany's cash-strapped government is paying
$285,200 to build a tunnel to help frogs avoid the perils of a
busy road, officials said.
Ruediger Zech, a local council spokesman in the Berlin
district of Reinickendorf, said the project would allow native
varieties of toads, frogs and other amphibians to reach a
nearby lake safely when they spawn in the spring.
Previously the creatures had been carried across the road
in buckets by volunteers from environmental groups.
The foreign ministry, headed by Green Party member Joschka
Fischer, is funding construction of the tunnel near a training
center for diplomats on the outskirts of Berlin.
A foreign ministry spokeswoman said the tunnel was part of
a package of environmental measures agreed when the ministry
took over the Villa Borsig, a country house located in a nature
preserve north of Berlin.

[NJFFSA16]

SINGAPORE - Singapore may decriminalize oral sex between
men and women, a government minister said, but homosexual oral
sex looks set to stay illegal.
The move follows a highly publicized case of a 27-year-old
policeman jailed for two years in November for receiving
consensual oral sex from a 15-year-old girl.
That case provoked rare public criticism of Singapore's
government. Protests over the law filled newspaper forum pages
and buzzed in Internet chat rooms.
In an earlier case detailed in the Straits Times a wife
tried to punish her unfaithful husband by performing oral sex
on him and then reporting him to the police.
Singapore is relaxing other laws such as rules on
bungee-jumping, bar-top dancing and chewing gum in a bid to
shake off its stuffy image and lure foreign professionals.

[NJFFSA16]

BOSTON, Jan 7 (Reuters) - Talk about a rude awakening.
A Massachusetts man woke with a jolt in the parking lot
next to his home early on Tuesday after a stolen car plowed
into his one-room house, pushing his double bed through the
front wall, police said on Wednesday.
"The driver of the stolen car failed to navigate a turn and
crashed into the house sending the resident and his bed
outside. That is where he woke up," said Dennis Police
Department Lt. Martin Murphy.
Murphy said Ellis Thomas, 34, was shocked but not seriously
hurt. "He thought someone had broken into the house," Murphy
said.
The man who barreled into the Cape Cod house escaped in
another stolen car and has not been found, Murphy said.

Reut13:14 01-07-04

[NJFFSA16]

"Viking village" hopes cruelly dashed in Scotland
LONDON, Jan 8 (Reuters) - Archaeologists were excited to
find what they thought was the first evidence of ninth century
Viking settlement in Scotland.
They had spent days painstakingly excavating the site after
50-year old Marion Garry said she had uncovered an unusual
arrangement of smooth, flat stones a few feet below the surface
of her garden in Fife.
"We thought we'd hit the jackpot," Scottish archaeologist
Douglas Speirs told newspapers.
But as they cleared the site, doubts began to arise -- what
for example was a 1940s baby pacifier doing in there? Never
mind, modern objects are often found in archaeological digs.
Only when the area was completely excavated and materials
analysed did the horrible truth dawn -- the stones were nothing
more significant than a 1940s sunken patio.
"After all our efforts, you can imagine how silly we feel,"
said Speirs.
Ms Garry said that she was looking forward to turning the
patio into a new garden feature.
"It looks quite messy now but I think it will look very
pretty with flowers and plants growing around it during the
summer," she said.
REUTERS

[E40FDNYL35]

January 8, 2004 -- Three fugitives who had barricaded themselves in a Florida attic ran out of their hiding hole and straight into the arms of cops - after they found a human skeleton in the creepy spot. One of the panicked probation-violation suspects screamed, "Get me out of here! There's a dead body up here!" said Daytona Beach Sgt. Al Tolley.
Cops are investigating why the skeleton was there in the first place.

[E40FDNYL35]

January 9, 2004 -- A Florida golfer who went 40 years without a hole-in-one has beaten 67 million-to-1 odds by notching two - in a single round. Marva Ged, 56, who has a 15 handicap, says she is "still in disbelief" after the two aces at Hunter's Run in Boynton Beach. "When I came to my senses, I called the pro shop and said, 'I'm not on drugs and I've not been drinking, but I've just had two hole-in-ones,' " Ged said.