Bear Takes Joyride Into Mailbox
In Durango, Colorado, bears frequently break into cars looking for food. This week was the first that one resident can recall a bear actually taking the car for a short drive. After likely releasing a Subaru SUV’s parking brake in a driveway, a black bear rolled down the driveway and crashed the vehicle into a mailbox. The commotion woke the mailbox’s owners, who looked out the window to see the damage. Authorities determined it must have been a bear due to the interior damage to the car, as well as the fact that the bear defecated in the cab.
Wake Up!
Bring a noisemaker the next time you board a train or pass a truck on the interstate. Sleep apnea, a fatigue-inducing sleep disorder, has in the past been a condition truck drivers or train engineers are screened for. That will soon come to an end as a result of President Donald Trump’s efforts to eliminate many federal regulations. The Federal Railroad Administration and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration said last week it would be up to individual rail and truck companies to screen for the disorder, rather than a federal rule. Sleep apnea is believed to be a factor in Metro-North and New Jersey Transit train crashes in 2013 and 2016, respectively.
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She Probably Won’t Become a Metallica Fan
A man was arrested in Glendale, Arizona, after being accused of peeing on a 10-year-old girl and her parents who were sitting in front of him at a Metallica show. Court documents state the family “felt warm liquid washing over their backs and legs,” and that when they confronted the man about it, his response was to shrug. Authorities arrested the man, charging him with indecent exposure and disorderly conduct, and said he was heavily intoxicated at the time.
Godzilla Has Fallen
The man who was Godzilla has died. Haruo Nakajima, who wore the Godzilla suit in 12 movies, died at the age of 88 of pneumonia. The original 1954 costume, which was created using concrete, weighed about 220 pounds. From that point until 1972, he was in many sequels, also playing beasts Rodan, Mothra, and King Kong. To prepare for the role, he said he studied animals in the Tokyo zoo.
A Call For Bacon Bounty Hunters
A Canadian farmer is looking for the guy who stole $1,000 worth of power tools from his farm in Nova Scotia. The reward: about five pounds of bacon. Melvin Burns of Moo Nay Farms also had some words for the thief, or the other thief who stole about $5,000 worth of pigs and hens earlier this summer: if you come clean, you can get a job helping out on the farm. “If they needed money that badly, we could find them something to do and help them out,” he told CBC News in Canada.
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We Don’t Serve Your Kind
White supremacists looking for a cheap place to stay while attending a Charlottesville, Virginia, rally featuring racist speakers had to look somewhere other than AirBnb. The company cancelled the accounts of guests who it found were using the service to attend the rally. In a statement, the company stated the users were antithetical to its community standards, which compels the AirBnb community to accept people regardless of their race, religion, national origin, ethnicity, disability, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, or age. The hurt racists raged on Twitter, some calling for a boycott of AirBnb.
A Big Sacrifice
New York City Police are going on a doughnut strike, at least against those from Dunkin’ Donuts. After a New York Post story about two police officers who were allegedly refused service at one of the doughnut shops, the head of the Detectives’ Endowment Association is leading a boycott against all Dunkin’ Donuts stores. He wants an apology from the chain, but so far the store manager is sticking by his employee. His story is that the police officers were waiting in front of the wrong counter.
A Thin Story About Thin Air
An Indian couple has been fired from their jobs as police officers after their bosses found out that they faked their Everest climb. The BBC reported that their commissioner claimed they had “brought disrepute to the Maharashtra Police department” and that they had shared misleading information when they posted photos showing them at the summit — photos that other hikers disputed. It will be a while before they get to try again. Nepalese authorities imposed a 10-year mountaineering ban after determining they had faked their summit attempt.
Just A Bad Idea
A 21-year-old Tennessee man enthusiastically playing the video game “Call of Duty” almost shot his neighbor’s dog when a high-powered rifle went off in his lap. It wasn’t clear how the gun, a loaded AR-15, was fired or why the man had it with him while playing the game. The bullet went through his wall and terrified his 75-year-old next door neighbor, who said the bullet nearly hit her dog. Call of Duty is a popular first-person shooter game. The man was charged with a misdemeanor reckless endangerment.
Always Remember To Flush
That’s advice a man accused of burglarizing a California home didn’t take after a pit stop at the home’s bathroom. The man allegedly “did his business and didn’t flush it” according to a Ventura County Sheriff’s Office detective, who said his colleagues were able to obtain the straight poop — DNA evidence — from the toilet’s contents. The DNA matched a person in a national database and detectives went to his home and made their arrest.
Dave Eisenstadter can be reached at [email protected].
