Bolts, dolts, and headwear that revolts
Weird, Wild, and Wacky, the Endless Summer Edition
Once again, here’s your more-or-less monthly “Dose” of news and events that are just too funny, strange, or surreal not to report
Let there be lightning
A bolt of lightning blew the hand and part of a foot off a marble statue hundreds worship every Sunday at a Catholic summer camp for orphans in Golden, Colorado. Thankfully, the organization that runs the camp has insurance for the valuable statute – which was brought from Italy to the US by a Saint in 1954
But ironically, the policy may not cover damage from “acts of God.” The camp’s Sisters are taking donations to help repair the damage until insurance officials can make the determination. Whether the strike was punishment from The Almighty for un-absolved sins of camp attendees or staff may never be known.
Lettuce not be victims
Bravo to Briton George Smith, the 82-year-old pensioner who really used his “head” to foil a gun-toting store robber. The WWII veteran octogenarian belted the would-be bandit twice in the face – with an iceberg lettuce he grabbed off the shelf!
Dazed by the vegetable barrage, the shotgun-wielding thief fled the scene, escaping British police – on a bicycle! According to The Sun UK, he is believed to be the same crook who made off with 1000 in one of 3 earlier robberies with the same MO.
Hmmm. Four attempted robberies by a man carrying a shotgun and riding a BIKE. No arrests. Gotta love that British SWAT response
The man in the un-ironed mask
Only in West Virginia. According to an Associated Press article from May 10, a thief armed only with one of those cigarette lighters that looks like a derringer tried to rob a convenience store in the Mountain State town of Inwood
He didn’t get away with any money because the clerk behind the counter thought the robbery attempt was a joke – but NOT because of the obviously fake lighter-gun. It’s because the robber was wearing a pair of light blue women’s panties on his head as a mask! Police apprehended a suspect a short time later in a vehicle matching the car the “masked” man drove off in. Whether or not they made him stand in a lineup with the panties on his head is unknown.
And in a pair of animal-related incidents
The tortoise and the scare
When the fire alarm at the Sea Life Museum in Weymouth, England sounded one night in December of last year, the fire brigade came post haste – only to discover that nothing had been burned anywhere
Except perhaps in the sea-turtle tank. According to a marine biologist at the nature center, the turtle’s diet of Brussels sprouts had caused it to emit enough bubbly, methane-heavy flatulence to set off the alarm! Funny, same thing happens when humans eat them.
Malign feline irony
One of the world’s foremost experts on cats, a renowned veterinarian from Cornel University in upstate New York, died last month in a tragic motorcycle accident, according to the Associated Press
The cause wasn’t drunkenness or carelessness or foul weather or even another driver’s inattentive error. In a malign twist of spooky, barely believable irony, the man had lost control of his bike trying to avoid hitting a CAT IN THE ROAD.
