Archive for the ‘strange happenings’ category

A Goat Walked Into a Music Store…

April 20, 2011

 – – It sounds like a set-up line for a really bad joke, but it actually happened at a piano store in the southeastern Idaho town of Ammon!  The goat is reported to have followed a woman and her child into the Piano Gallery on Monday.  The staff corralled the goat in a bathroom until animal control arrived.

Dubbed “Beethoven” for its apparent love of music, the goat is being held at the Idaho Falls Animal Shelter;  if it isn’t claimed, someone is ready to adopt it.

We would suspect that the goat was just looking for some sheeeet music for his kids


Grin and Bear It!

April 16, 2011

– – During medieval times, animals were at times tormented as public entertainment through such displays as bear-baiting and what was termed the “horse and ape” spectacle; dogs were also trained to fight bears and bulls confined in a pit.  To add insult to injury, animals were occasionally even put on trial!   In 1499, a bear was charged with terrorizing villages in Germany.   Defense lawyers cried foul (not bruin), and pleaded that the defendant should be tried by a jury of its peers…peer bears, that is!

If,  however,  Yogi Bear is ever put on trial, I’d volunteer to be judge, jury, and Lord High Executioner…sorry, Boo-boo!

Another Dubious Bigfoot Video…

March 26, 2011

– – Lord have mercy, it’s another Bigfoot video, this one from a guy in Rutherford County in North Carolina taken March 22nd, and guess what?—It’s blurry! The Bigfoot in this video is socially challenged and hygienically impaired.

The videotape is reported to show a 7-foot-tall, 300 pound, six-toed Bigfoot as taken from a distance of 15 to 20 feet away.  The creature, described as brown and furry, allegedly ran across a local road in Rutherford County, and smelled “like a cross between roadkill and a skunk.”  Bigfoot also supposedly snarled or growled at the photographer as it ran across the road.

Needless to say, the authenticity of the video has come into question, with a local respected Bigfoot hunter maintaining that a real Bigfoot creature would have only five toes and present with a different walking stride.   To quote another commentator, “I don’t believe that we as humans have seen all there is to see in this world, but when you show me a video that is in focus and does not appear to be some gorilla-suited weirdo, then I will believe someone captured Bigfoot on film.

Of Mice, Men, and Pizzas…

March 4, 2011

– – Some people bug their competition, while others inflict rodent infestations on them…or so it was in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania where a pizzeria owner with mice problems that he blamed on competitors tried to level the playing field by planting mice in two rival shops, presumably to drive them out of business.

Police authorities say that a man requested to use the bathroom in one pizzeria, taking the opportunity while in there to tuck a bag of three mice inside the drop ceiling.  He then walked across the street to another pizzeria, putting a bag of five live and one deceased mouse inside a trash can within that establishment!

The offending pizza-maker is facing charges of disorderly conduct, harassment, and animal cruelty, police said.  “We have never had anything like this where mice have been used as an instrument of crime,” said the police Superintendent.

The mice, evidently purchased the day of the crime at a nearby pet store, were turned over to animal control officers…

The Domestic Fox…

February 24, 2011

– – I always try to advise people that foxes make lousy pets; we sleep in too late, eat entirely too much junk food, and lounge around in our underwear, scratching.  Besides that, foxes are wild animals, as anyone who has seen us at conventions can testify!

That having been said, however, there have been a few rare cases when people have successfully made pets of foxes, although we would prefer to think that we have made pets of the humans;  you won’t catch me cleaning up after them, no sir-ee-bob!   As a case in point let me introduce you to Miss Snooks, a comely vixen in East Sussex, England who was taken in seven years ago as an abandoned cub by a couple.  She lives in her own one bedroom flat above the couple’s pet shop,

Reared by hand and used to people, Miss Snooks dozes on a sofa, plays hide-and-seek in a den of blankets, goes for evening walks, and enjoys her favorite meals of roast chicken cooked in honey.  Her custodians describe Miss Snooks as beautiful and very affectionate…but again, her case is an unusual one and a violation of the natural order.

The Return of Bownessie!

February 18, 2011

– – Last September, we had posted about Bownessie, possibly a distant relative of the Loch Ness monster native to Lake Windermere, England’s largest lake.   A recent eighth sighting of the creature in the past five years has produced the clearest photographic image yet of the elusive cryptid, revealing a creature with oily black skin and three eerie humps.

The unidentified animal was judged to be about the size of three cars by the 24-year-old kayaker and his companion who observed it, and it moved at approximately 10 miles an hour with each hump demonstrating a rippling motion.

Skeptics remain unconvinced that something of the size attributed to the creature could exist in the 11 mile long lake.  Echo sounding surveys conducted each month have revealed nothing, nor have two prior sonar scans.   A lake ecologist feels that the aquatic beast could be an Eastern European catfish misjudged as to size.  A hoax cannot be ruled out as the file size of the photo, taken on a camera phone, is too small to really tell if it had been altered on Photoshop or not…

Wrecking Bunny Ad…

February 4, 2011

We all know that it’s important to use the right tool for the right job, and H&R Block illustrates this fact in a recent commercial by showing us a demolition crew trying to take  down a brick building with a 16-foot-tall pink and white bunny…predictably, it doesn’t go too well.  Clearly, a plush bunny is not good for demolition, even a really big one.

In the “wrecking bunny” ad, people gathered at a demolition site “ooh” and “ahh” as the bunny is raised by a crane and swung toward the building.  There’s a muffled thump as the bunny impacts with the unyielding brick, crews wince, and spectators plod away with dejected looks on their faces as they realize that the plushy is not going to take the building out.

It’s an absurdist type thing, but I wind up feeling vaguely sorry for the bunny, wondering if they’re going to keep bashing him into the wall until his poor stuffing pops out; the plushy doesn’t seem to mind, however, and maintains his slight smile…what a trooper!- -Is this abuse of a plushy?- -Can’t someone rescue him?!  He just needs a good, loving home, admittedly one with a lot of space.

Perhaps in the future we’ll see other inappropriate tools used on the wall, like an enormous marshmallow or a gigantic cream-filled donut!

Life Imitates Art!

January 25, 2011

– – Those of you familiar with Peter Pan or the movie Hook may recall how a crocodile was Captain Hook’s nemesis, but his approach could be detected by the pirate owing to the ticking of an alarm clock swallowed by the reptile.  The presence of this foreign body did not otherwise adversely affect the croc outside of diminishing his chances of a pirate supper.

Well, Peter Pan was nowhere in sight, but life imitated art when a 14-year-old crocodile called Gena at an aquarium in the Ukraine indigested a cell phone dropped by a woman as she attempted to photograph the croc!  The Nokia phone started ringing afterwards inside of Gena’s stomach (now that’s quality!), and the croc has since been refusing food and acting listless.  Even worse, the croc hasn’t had a BM in four weeks and appears depressed and in pain since consuming the phone.

Hoping that all things will pass, doctors tried to feed Gena quail laced with vitamins and laxatives, but he didn’t take the bait.  The crocodile will be taken for an X-ray next week if he continues to refuse food.  Surgery is a last resort as incisions and stitches take at least three weeks to heal in reptiles, and the procedure is dangerous for both the animal and the vets.

The crocodile in Peter Pan, by the way, had bitten off one of Captain Hook’s hands and wanted to continue the banquet.- -Aren’t kiddie stories great?!


Something Smells Fishy!

January 7, 2011

– – Were the Mayans on to something?–Is it the Apocalypse?!- -I dunno, but just as birds were dropping from the skies in Beebe, Arkansas a massive fish kill was occurring some 125 miles to the west over a 20-mile stretch of the Arkansas River!

Some 100,000 drum fish were involved.  A pollutant was not felt to have been involved as only drum fish were affected, and a pollutant would have affected all fish.

The massive fish kill appears to be a natural occurrence, however, that is not tied to the bird kill in any way.  Fish kills in the area are common, although this one was larger than most…

Mysterious Goat Slaughter!

January 5, 2011

– – Over the past two months, more than 300 goats owned by shepherds in Mexico’s Puebla state have been decapitated by someone…or something! As there was reportedly very little blood in the area where the goat bodies have been found, suspicions are again afoot about the chupacabra or some other unidentified animal being the culprit.

Chupacabra sightings often emanate from the Southwest U.S., Puerto Rico, Latin America, and Mexico.  Researchers have speculated that the reported chupacabras of Mexico and Texas may actually be coyote hybrids, although in Mexico groups of peasants have formed watch groups to monitor any possible chupacabra activity in their communities.  With so many incidents, 2010 has been termed by some “the year of the goat sucker.

Now that’s something I could sink my teeth into…ahahahahaha!