A police officer in West Yorkshire, England, shared the thoughts of many after being called to the scene of a wreck involving a $300,000 Lamborghini that lasted only 20 minutes on the road before it was totaled on June 24. "It's only a car," the officer tweeted, but he "could have cried." According to the BBC, the car suffered a mechanical failure during its virgin drive and came to a stop in the outside land of the M1 motorway, where it was rear-ended by a van. The driver of the van suffered nonserious head injuries in the crash. The Lamborghini driver was not identified, nor was it clear whether he was hurt in the crash. [BBC, 6/25/2020]

Idle Hands

TikTok user Kevin Wise told KSLA he was looking for his five minutes of fame when he jumped into a fish tank at Bass Pro Shop in Bossier, Louisiana, in late June. "I said that if I got 2,000 likes, I would jump in the tank," Wise said. "I got way more than that and didn't want to be a liar." Shopper Treasure McGraw recorded video of Wise swimming around in the tank before he climbed out and ran through the store, soaking wet. "We heard a big splash, and I thought it was one of the fish," McGraw said. Initially, Bass Pro Shops said it would not press charges, but on June 26, the company filed a complaint with the Bossier City Police Department, noting that it had to empty the 13,000-gallon tank and clean it after Wise's swim. Wise wouldn't recommend the stunt to others. "Don't do spur-of-the-moment crap like I do," he warned. [KSLA, 6/26/2020]

Repeat Offender

Devin Roberts, 32, of Bardwell, Kentucky, caught the attention of local media after being arrested three times in one week. Carlisle County Sheriff's deputies first encountered Roberts on June 23, WSIL reported, when he called the sheriff's office to say he had taken a case he found next to a dumpster that turned out to contain items belonging to the city. When officers arrived, they determined the case had been removed from a city building. The following Saturday, Roberts was accused of fighting with a grocery store clerk and making lewd comments to female employees. Sheriff William Gilbert found Roberts at his home, passed out in a running vehicle while under the influence of alcohol. He had also left his 3-year-old son at home with another inebriated person. Finally, on June 28, deputies pulling over a car on suspicion of drunken driving found Roberts in the passenger seat, drunk and in possession of alcohol, which violated the terms of his earlier bonds. Roberts faces multiple charges related to all three encounters. [WSIL, 6/28/2020]

Questionable Judgments

-- The Sun reported on June 29 that two Ryanair pilots are in the (chicken) soup after they recorded themselves getting silly with a rubber chicken in the cockpit of a Boeing 737-800. In the video, thought to be recorded as passengers boarded the plane in Birmingham, England, the first officer and pilot trade off using the chicken to operate the airplane's throttle and making it squeak while mugging for the camera. Other crew members laugh in the background. A spokesperson for Ryanair commented: "These pictures and videos show crew on the ground in a parked aircraft with the engines shut down. While the images are unprofessional, the actions in them posed no risk and safety was never compromised. ... (Nevertheless) we are investigating the matter further." [The Sun, 6/29/2020]

-- Merseyside Police responding to the scene of a crash in Huyton, England, in the wee hours of June 28 say they arrived in time to witness a woman "finishing off a glass of wine," according to the Echo. In the collision, a white Mercedes had plowed into a parked Ford Focus, with both cars sustaining significant damage. Photographs from the scene showed the Mercedes to contain an empty wine bottle on the floor of the passenger seat, along with a wine glass, and another full bottle in a storage compartment. Police announced the arrest of two women, 33 and 35, on suspicion of unauthorized taking of a motor vehicle and drunk driving. [Echo, 6/29/2020]

This Old House

Firefighters were called to a home in Guilford, Connecticut, on June 29 where a resident had fallen through a wood floor in the 177-year-old house and down about 30 feet into a well, WHDH reported. The victim treaded water for about 25 minutes while responders worked to hoist them out. Apparently, the well had been covered over by an addition made to the home during a 1981 renovation. "Some of these older, historical homes may have hazards that were not updated by current code," the Guilford Police Department tweeted. The victim was taken to the hospital but had only minor injuries. [WHDH, 6/29/2020]

Chutzpah

Fisherman Dawson Cody Porter, 22, of Eagle River, Alaska, was arrested June 27 outside the Fisherman's Bar after arriving there driving a stolen fire truck with its emergency lights flashing, the Anchorage Daily News reported. Bristol Bay Borough police said Porter broke into the King Salmon Fire Station around 9 p.m., where he started the truck and drove it through the station's closed bay doors, making his way west on the Alaska Peninsula Highway about 15 miles to Naknek. Police Chief John Rhyshek said Porter caused about $10,000 in damage and put the fire truck out of commission while repairs are made to it. [Anchorage Daily News, 6/29/2020]

A Family Affair

Retired wheat farmer Peter Grundy, 84, of Denilliquin, New South Wales, Australia, has wanted to sell his apartment in Melbourne for the past eight years so he can move to a retirement home, but he's been foiled by his 49-year-old daughter, Katrina, who refuses to move out. Grundy has taken his daughter to court to evict her, Nine reported, but she won't budge, and Grundy is running out of options. "I'm sure it's taken the bit of youth I had left in me," said Grundy, describing his daughter as "very clever in legal terms." Katrina contends her parents gifted her the apartment, but a judge has dismissed that claim. Dad has spent about $70,000 (Australian) in legal fees. "She has an enormous capability to come up with things we never hear of," he said. [Nine, 6/24/2020]

Should Have Seen It Coming

Alexander Feaster, 44, in Hunter, Oklahoma, was arrested and charged in the June 28 shooting of an unnamed 26-year-old woman who had been attending a party across the street from Feaster's property. Garfield County Sheriff Jody Helm told KFOR that, on a dare, the woman had tried to steal one of two Nazi swastika flags displayed in Feaster's front yard, but "on the way back, someone hollered gun. She dropped the flag ... and shots were fired." Police executing a search warrant on the home found more than a dozen guns and ammunition. Feaster was charged with assault and battery with a deadly weapon and shooting with intent to kill. The woman is expected to survive. [KFOR, 6/29/2020]

Car buyer Da Tong Yang of Richmond, British Columbia, became so frustrated with his local Mercedes-Benz dealership that in January he flew to the company's headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany, to seek help. Yang bought his wife, Guifang Huo, a brand-new S550 in 2017, partially because he believed the $155,000 car to be one of the safest vehicles available, but a year later, the couple claimed, the steering wheel locked, causing the car to nearly crash into a concrete wall. Mercedes-Benz said an "internal electrical issue" was at fault and assured the couple it was fixed. Yang wasn't convinced, demanded his money back or a replacement car, then sued the company when it declined. The case has languished in court, prompting Yang's trip to Stuttgart in early June "to find justice, not only for him but also for other drivers," he told the Richmond News. Despite his personal appearance, litigation is still underway. [Richmond News, 6/8/2020]

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

An unnamed 66-year-old woman in Ewing, New Jersey, gave $1 to a man begging in a drugstore parking lot on June 18 and became the victim of a carjacking, according to the Associated Press. Ewing police said Tomasz Dymek, 31, of Queens, New York, "was not satisfied with the dollar, so he forced his way into the victim's vehicle and drove from the lot, sitting on top of her in the driver's seat." Witnesses alerted police, who followed Dymek into Fairless Hills, Pennsylvania, where the car broke down and officers arrested him. [Associated Press, 6/19/2020]

Bright Idea

Bradley Bell, head writer for "The Bold and the Beautiful," told the New York Post the show is experimenting with using blowup dolls in love scenes as the daytime soap, in hiatus since March, resumed taping on June 17. Challenged to adhere to COVID-19 protocols, Bell said, "We put our heads together trying to figure out a way to make these scenes work without breaking the 8-foot (distancing) rule ... and we brought out a doll we used years ago as a corpse." The result, he said, "was very convincing ... We'll be using her with hair and makeup as a stand-in to match some of our leading ladies." The show has also recruited some of the actors' spouses as body doubles. "We've had stunt doubles before," Bell said, "but this is the first time we've had kissing doubles." [New York Post, 6/17/2020]

Least Competent, Most Ambitious Criminals

-- Donnovan Russell Jester, 28, of Largo, Florida, was arrested on June 18 for grand theft of a vessel -- a $900,000, 46-foot-long yacht. The Tampa Bay Times reported the theft took place March 20 at Thunder Marine, where Pinellas County deputies said the 2019 Jeanneau Leader was stolen and driven into four channel-marker pilings, doing about $60,000 worth of damage, before being abandoned to drift in an oyster bed. Investigators found Jester's thumbprint on a cabin door; he was held at the Pinellas County jail on $50,000. [Tampa Bay Times, 6/23/2020]

-- At 1:28 a.m. on June 20, airport air traffic control in New Smyrna Beach, Florida, contacted police about a distress call coming from an aircraft. Officers already at the airport trying to locate a car they believed had been stolen from Daytona Beach found Robert Stienstra, 22, of DeBary, Florida, sitting in the airplane on the airport apron, according to an arrest report. Stienstra asked an officer whether he knew how to fly a plane, the report stated, then explained that he had recently purchased the aircraft (valued at $1 million) for $20,000 and needed to fly to California to take marijuana and meet his girlfriend. The Daytona Beach News-Journal reported that along with a bag of weed, Stienstra had in his possession a glass pipe with remnants of methamphetamine and other drug paraphernalia. New Smyrna Beach police charged Stienstra with grand theft over $100,000; he was also wanted by Daytona Beach police on charges of grand theft of a motor vehicle. [Daytona Beach News-Journal, 6/22/2020]

News That Sounds Like a Joke

After falling asleep following a 10-bottle beer-drinking binge, and failing to heed nature's call for 18 hours, a 40-year-old Chinese man identified as Mr. Hu was diagnosed with a burst bladder, the New York Post reported on June 23. The man appeared at Zhuji People's Hospital in Zhejiang, China, complaining of searing abdominal pain, and doctors discovered three tears in his bladder, one of which had caused his intestines to spill into the bladder. Mr. Hu underwent emergency surgery and was able to recover. Zhuji officials said while bladder rupture is rare, they see at least one such patient every year. [New York Post, 6/23/2020]

The Litigious Society

The Tampa Bay Times reports that Kris Hedstrom of Odessa, Florida, filed suit against her neighbor, Heather Dayner, in late May, demanding a paternity test for the five goats she purchased from Dayner or a full refund. Hedstrom bought the five Nigerian Dwarf goats -- Bella, Gigi, Rosie, Zelda and Margoat -- in December, paying $900, and expected to register them with the American Dairy Goat Association, according to the lawsuit. Registered goats have higher value than nonregistered goats. But the ADGA denied Hedstrom's application because Dayner is not a member of the organization, and Dayner now accuses Hedstrom of trespassing on her farm and harassing her with calls to the police. "She's been a nightmare of a neighbor," Dayner said. Dayner plans to represent herself in court in July. [Tampa Bay Times, 6/23/2020]

Ironic

Researchers at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia, have made an unexpected discovery in their study of the endangered night parrot, one of only two nocturnal parrot species in the world: It has poor night vision. The night parrot lives in Australia's outback and differs from the other nocturnal parrot, New Zealand's kakapo, which has lost its ability to fly, ABC reported. "The night parrot still flies, and there lies the problem of the bird running into things," said Dr. Vera Weisbecker, which may be contributing to its decline. [ABC, 6/11/2020]

Creme de la Weird

Koji Ishii, 39, of Tokyo, admits his passion is sometimes more like a “curse”: He is compelled to document every lost glove he sees on the streets of his city. He photographs and records details about each one, whether they’re stuck in drains or washed up on a beach, but never touches or removes them. Over 15 years, he’s curated more than 5,000 stray gloves, including children's mittens, heavy workingman's gloves and lacy ladies' accessories. “I live with the constant fear that there might be a glove right around the corner,” Ishii told AFP. He even gets off buses before his stop if he sees a glove on the ground. For him, the attraction is thinking about how the glove got there and who once wore it. “Lone gloves are a constantly changing, dynamic phenomena,” Ishii said. [AFP via Yahoo News, 6/18/2020]

The Boston Typewriter Orchestra has been performing its unique brand of music throughout New England since 2004 and will now be releasing its first vinyl album later this summer. Self-proclaimed conductor Tim Devin and a group of friends founded the ensemble as a joke, reports Ripley's Believe It or Not, and after premiering at Boston's Art Beat Festival, the idea took off. Using vintage machines to rhythmically clack, roll, spin and bang out "music," the typist-musicians say different models produce different sounds. "A Smith-Corona Galaxy 12 has a power space function that makes a nice metallic clang sound," explained Brendan Emmett Quigley. [Ripley's Believe It or Not, 6/16/2020]

Animal Antics

-- In Oakland, California's Grand Lake neighborhood, Gerald the turkey has been an institution for some time, regularly queueing up with carpool riders near Morcom Rose Garden. But lately, Gerald has grown grumpy and started attacking park visitors, reports KGO, prompting complaints to Oakland Animal Services. "I swear I was getting flashbacks to the velociraptor scenes in 'Jurassic Park' as he was 'cooing' at me, sizing me up," one said. Others said Gerald charged them, clawing and pecking as they tried to run. In response, the city closed the rose garden at the end of May and asked people not to feed Gerald or any other wildlife, as it "may have contributed to the male turkey becoming more aggressive," the parks department said. Animal control officers are also trying to "train him to revert to natural behaviors," but have had limited success keeping him socially distanced from humans. [KGO, 6/12/2020]

-- Kalua, an infamous alcoholic monkey in Kanpur, India, has been sentenced to live out his days in isolation, Gulf News reported. The animal once belonged to a local occultist who would give him alcohol. After the owner died, Kalua couldn't get his fix and became aggressive, sinking his teeth into more than 250 people, one of who died of his wound. The Kanpur zoo took Kalua in, trying to acclimate him to captivity and other monkeys, but zoo workers are throwing in the towel. "It has been three years since he was brought here," said zoo doctor Mohd Nasir. "He will remain in captivity all his life." [Gulf News, 6/16/2020]

Desperate Times

-- In April, following the cancellation of basketball madness, a Twitter account called March Madness of Flags was launched "for the love of vexillology," pitting banners from all over the world against one another in a fearsome bracket to determine which was the "coolest flag." During the final four, held over the weekend of June 13-14, the St. Louis (Missouri) flag beat out Stuttgart's entry, then went on to clinch the championship in a commanding 625-49 victory over the standard from Yaroslavl Oblast, a Russian federal district north of Moscow. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported the city's flag, a relative newcomer, was designed by Yale University art history professor Theodore Sizer and adopted in 1964 for the city's bicentennial. [St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 6/15/2020]

-- For those missing travel abroad, Songshan Airport in Taipei, Taiwan, is offering 90 people the opportunity to tour the airport and "pretend to go abroad." On July 2, 4 and 7, participants can spend a half-day going through immigration, boarding an airplane, and then getting off the plane and re-entering the country through immigration. "People who didn't have the opportunity to take international flights at Songshan (can) use this chance to experience and learn more about the boarding process and relevant service facilities," Chih-ching Wang, deputy director of the airport, told CNN Travel. Tour customers will also get to take home "exclusive mysterious gifts." [CNN Travel, 6/12/2020]

Awwwwww

Seniors from Glens Falls High School near Tulsa, Oklahoma, pulled a classic prank on what would have been the last day of their high school career: On June 12, they hung a large sign from the school saying, "For Sale! Vacant Since March," along with some of the school's attributes, such as "2 full size gyms" and "swimming pool." But Principal Tammy Silvernell could hardly be mad: Attached to the back of the sign was a letter from students she characterized as "the most polite pranksters ever," according to The Daily Gazette. "This was all in good fun," the letter read. "We hope to have made you laugh and miss us a little more ... thank you all for an amazing four years at GFHS!" The students also offered to remove the sign and included a phone number to call. [Daily Gazette, 6/13/2020]

The Foreign Press

The Associated Press reported that an unnamed man in Vienna, Austria, was hit with a 500 euro ($565) fine for "offending public decency" when he broke wind following an encounter with police on June 5. Authorities said that "of course no one is reported for accidentally 'letting one go,'" but after behaving "provocatively and uncooperatively," the man rose from a bench and "let go a massive intestinal wind apparently with full intent. And our colleagues don't like to be farted at so much." [ABC News, 6/16/2020]

Bad Apples

-- The Gatlinburg SkyBridge in Tennessee was closed on June 15 after a guest at SkyLift Park attempted to execute a baseball-style slide across the glass panels in the middle of the bridge and a piece of metal on the guest's clothing chipped and cracked the top layer of glass. According to WBIR, multiple signs warn against "running, jumping or bouncing" on the SkyBridge, the longest pedestrian suspension bridge in North America. Park spokesman Marcus Watson said the top layer of glass serves only as protection for the other two layers and the cracks didn't affect the span's structural integrity. Workers replaced the layer of glass with cedar planks and the bridge has been reopened. [WBIR, 6/16/2020]

-- The U.S. Forest Service is investigating a photo posted by David Lesh, 35, on Instagram showing him walking on a log across Hanging Lake in Garfield County, Colorado, in defiance of clearly posted rules prohibiting people from entering the water there. The post blew up with criticisms, but Lesh fired back, challenging others to walk on the log and even defecate in the lake. KDVR reported Lesh has a history of run-ins with authorities, including being cited for harassing a moose with his car in 2014 and setting 25 grocery carts on fire in Boulder, Colorado. Earlier this year he was caught snowmobiling in the Keystone ski area when the slopes were shut down because of COVID-19. On June 16 he was ordered to pay $500 and do 50 hours of community service for another snowmobiling incident from 2019. [KDVR, 6/16/2020]

The Way the World Works

Saying that "extra precautions are justifiable and understandable where the president is concerned," Russian spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that anyone meeting President Vladimir Putin at his house outside Moscow or in the Kremlin must pass through a disinfection tunnel that showers visitors with a "disinfecting aerosol" and a bath of ultraviolet light. The Guardian reported on June 17 the tunnels can also use facial recognition software and take the visitor's temperature. Peskov said, "They were installed when the epidemic was in full swing," but would not say whether Putin has used the tunnels himself. [The Guardian, 6/17/2020]

RIP

The Hollywood Reporter announced on June 16 that puppeteer Pat Brymer, 70, passed away in April. As a puppet builder, Brymer worked with ventriloquist Shari Lewis on "Lamb Chop's Play Along" and with Trey Parker and Matt Stone's "Team America: World Police," but he is best remembered for bringing to life Bill Murray's pesky nemesis gopher in 1980's "Caddyshack." [Hollywood Reporter, 6/16/2020]