The Los Angeles County child-support agency, on the losing side of a June California Court of Appeal paternity decision, asked the state Supreme Court to officially not tell anyone about the decision, so as to discourage additional paternity challenges. (Normally in America, if a man acquiesces that he is the father of a child, he is permanently responsible for child support, until adulthood, even if a DNA test later proves he is not the father. Going against the grain, the appeals court overturned Manual Navarro's paternity order based on a DNA test, and the agency petitioned the high court in August to "de-publish" that decision, fearing that other "fathers" might get negative DNA tests and thus stop paying support.) (Update: The state enacted a statute in October permitting such paternity challenges.)

Austin Gullette, 45, was arrested on Aug. 31 in West Monroe, La., after his sister caught him allegedly having sex with one of her three pigs. Two days later about 100 miles away in Florien, La., Timothy Garner, 35, was arrested after being spotted inside a henhouse, allegedly having sex with a chicken. (A sheriff's official in the West Monroe case said he had never before, in his 29-year career, seen a case of a man having sex with a pig, but then he added, to a Monroe News Star reporter, that of course there were cases involving men with "dogs, donkeys and sheep.")

Christopher Lehan, 36 (an employee of the exclusive Sedgewood Golf Club in Kent, N.Y.), was arrested in September sitting in a golf cart at night with a flashlight and a 20-gauge shotgun, after he had allegedly shot three skunks that were menacing the grounds. He was charged with various hunting violations and with carrying a loaded firearm in a moving vehicle.

University of Queensland (Australia) researchers told an entomology conference in August, after doing DNA "fingerprinting" of Nepalese and Inner Mongolian lice, that their team had disproved the apparently important general belief that body lice and head lice are separate species. And in September, Edward Cussler and Brian Gettelfinger, writing for a chemical engineering journal, showed that people swam no faster in water than in a substance twice as thick (after experiments in a pool to which "guar gum" had been added to the water to create something that, said Cussler, "looked like snot").

-- High school teacher Sonia Ornelas and her husband were charged with providing alcohol to minors after police cited at least 42 students from Pearsall (Texas) High School (mostly football players, band members and cheerleaders) for drinking at a raucous party in the Ornelases' home. The Ornelases defended themselves by saying that they had no idea alcohol was served and that they were upstairs asleep the whole time and didn't hear a thing.

-- Glen Paul Darby, contesting his drug conviction at the state Court of Appeal in Sydney, Australia, in September, argued that he not only was "searched" (sniffed) by a drug dog without probable cause but was also "assaulted" when the dog nudged Darby's pants with his snout to indicate just where the drugs were. A civil liberties advocate argued that some people are unusually traumatized by a dog's thrusting his snout against that area of the body.

-- The Montana Supreme Court ruled in September that just because police are permitted to enter a home through homeowner consent (during a loud party), they are still not permitted to open a bathroom door when a person inside is vomiting. (The vomiting woman was cited for underage drinking, but the court overturned the charge based on the illegal search.)

-- Homeowners are often startled to find that, in many states, if they give someone permission to stay with them for a while, and that guest eventually overstays his welcome, the homeowner can no longer easily eject the guest, or even have a sheriff do it, but rather must go through formal and lengthy eviction procedures. This issue surfaced most recently in Potomac, Md., when a retired social worker took in a down-on-her-luck, 39-year-old woman who, after a series of testy exchanges between the two, repeatedly refused to leave, feeling immune from eviction until the law had run its course. In August, according to police, the guest, Susan L. Sachs, was charged with murdering her host.

The race for U.S. Senate in Oklahoma (to succeed the retiring Don Nickles) was described in the press in September as so close that independent, former Green Party candidate Sheila Bilyeu, might take enough votes away from one or the other leading candidate as to influence the outcome. Bilyeu has gained notoriety in the last two decades by filing numerous lawsuits against the federal government (all eventually dismissed) demanding the removal of a radio-like device the military allegedly planted in her head in the 1970s. The device, she said, mostly sends her messages that are highly critical of her. She added in a later lawsuit that President Clinton had ordered her gassed and had stolen her dog.

A man named Ian Fleming, 33, was arrested in September in New York City after he attempted to deposit bogus, computer-generated checks into his account at a Commerce Bank in Forest Hills, in the amounts of, respectively, $5 billion and $6 billion. Police said that the week before, Fleming had done a trial run by successfully depositing bogus checks in the amounts of $350 and $1,300 and thus probably felt he was ready to move on up.

In 2002, News of the Weird mentioned a Wall Street Journal dispatch from Cuba, suggesting that Fidel Castro's 1987 vision of "apartment cows" was still a ways off. (Castro had pushed farmers to breed small cows, not much larger than dogs, that families could keep in small homes and that would supply their minimum daily quantities of milk.) Two months after that story ran, a farmer in Rockwell, Iowa, said he had bred such miniature cows but that they were not good milk producers. Cut to September 2004: An Associated Press dispatch from San Juan Y Martinez, Cuba, touted rancher Raul Hernandez, who has now apparently successfully created a small herd of 28-inch-high cows that can deliver about five quarts of high-quality milk.

Cleveland Indians pitcher Kyle Denney survived a random gunshot on Sept. 29 fired at the bus taking him and his teammates to the airport in Kansas City after a game. The bullet hit Denney's right calf but did not penetrate deep and was immediately removed by the team trainer. The bullet might have gone deeper except that Denney had on high plastic boots as part of the cheerleader's uniform he was wearing. (In end-of-season rituals in major league baseball, rookies like Denney are forced by their teammates to wear ridiculous outfits.)

Three of these four things really happened, just recently. Are you cynical enough to figure out the made-up story? (a) A Hawaiian company opened a big market in Japan for ultra-premium bottled water pumped from the ocean floor off the Big Island coast (and desalinated). (b) A man fleeing police in Maine was caught when he jumped into a car and started the engine before he noticed that the owner, working on it, had left it on jacks. (c) Police in Houston, called out on a loud-music complaint, stumbled upon a fetish party, finding 12 nude men, all virtually immobilized in clear plastic cling wrap. (d) Some farmers in Nebraska supplement declining income with adoption programs in which animal-rights advocates pay them not to slaughter their cattle.

Answer to Almost All True: (a), (b) and (d) are true.

(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa FL 33679 or WeirdNews@earthlink.net or go to www.NewsoftheWeird.com.)

A new computer gadget enables someone to apply direct physical stimulation sexually to another person over the Internet, thus advancing "cybersex" far beyond its previous limitation of mere words and pictures. According to a September report on Wired.com, the vibrating "Sinulator," with wireless receiver, can be activated remotely at different speeds and force by a spouse or anyone else who uses the device's password at Sinulator's Web site, and that manipulation can be done not only by keyboard and mouse, but by a male placing the Sinulator's transmitting sleeve ("Interactive Fleshlight") over his penis and thrusting at his (or the recipient's) preferred speed and force. "Thus," summarized the Wired writer, "a man can be thrusting in Cleveland while a woman is penetrated in Seattle."

In Clarksville, Ind., in June, Jason Grisham, 22, miraculously survived after climbing an electrical tower (scrambling past several obstacles and ignoring warning signs) and accidentally absorbing a virtually always-fatal 69,000 volts. And in September, the Ohio Supreme Court overturned a judge's order to Sean Talty to not procreate further until he had settled the $38,000 child-support tab for his first seven children (thus facilitating Talty's fathering even more people with his perhaps-genetic predisposition to irresponsibility).

In February, a 38-year-old Disneyland worker was killed when he fell from a three-part parade float and became trapped between the second and third sections. Disney's float was termed a "serious" workplace violation by the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and in August, it fined the multibillion-dollar company $6,300.

(1) Day-care operator Ronald G. Lesniak, 60, on trial in September in West Chicago for allegedly sexually molesting a child, said that it was legally impossible for him to have committed that particular crime because brain surgery 30 years ago left him with no sex drive and that his wife would testify to that. (2) And in New York City in September, a state Supreme Court justice ruled that a criminal conviction could not be overturned merely because a juror was tipsy during deliberations (the result of sipping from a 16-ounce water bottle that was half-vodka). (The juror was reported by his colleagues as "overly effusive," "scatterbrained," and "inappropriately forthcoming with opinions and directions," but the justice pointed out that New York has no law against a juror's drinking.)

-- When Montana State University-Bozeman student Jesse Huffman, 19, emerged from answering a brutal nature's call in the men's room at the Port of Sweet Grass on the U.S. side of the Canadian border in August, officers noticed that the toilet was clogged. Although Huffman said he had a medical problem and offered to try to fix the toilet, officers took Huffman into custody for "criminal mischief." Incredulous, Huffman was detained for six hours before being released pending a court date, but a few days later, a prosecutor dropped the case.

-- According to an August Pensacola (Fla.) News Journal report, a huge oak tree on Cypress Street in Fort Walton Beach, Fla., marks the spot of a major open drug and prostitution market that is the scene of several dozen arrests every month. The sheriff's office, weary of the constant parade of crimes and arrests and pressured by a community activist, recently told county officials that it had arrived at a solution: It asked permission to cut down the tree.

-- Twice in August, wounded suspects who had been detained by police but who needed hospitalization had their arrests delayed solely because the respective governments, in Vermont and Virginia, tried to avoid getting stuck with the men's hospital bills. In each case, police intended to formally arrest the suspect only after he got well, but in both cases, the suspects fled the hospital in wheelchairs before the police sent guards to their rooms. (Vermont burglary suspect William Stone, 39, rolled out with two broken legs, and attempted-murder suspect Obryan Cecil Braxton, 25, paralyzed from the neck down in a shootout, fled a hospital in Williamsburg, Va. Both were recaptured, and Stone was charged additionally with wheelchair theft.)

The 223-page novel "The Train From Nowhere," by a French writer using the name Michel Thaler, is reported to be the first novel in history with no verbs, and its May publication was met with damning reviews. "Thaler" has called the verb "like a weed in a field of flowers" and his book a "revolution in the history of literature," that it "is to literature what the great Dada and Surrealist movements were to art." Critics noted the book's lack of action, in that it consists only of, according to London's Daily Telegraph, "lengthy passages filled with florid adjectives in a series of vitriolic portraits of dislikable passengers on a train."

A Quad City Times (Davenport, Iowa) columnist reported in September on a man who recently drove into his housing community at 10:30 p.m. to discover about 500 14-inch-high, ceramic-faced Ronald McDonald dolls neatly lined up in the middle of six streets, two to three feet apart, with no witnesses or explanation as to how they got there or why. The columnist, Bill Wundram, discovered only that the dolls were probably taken from the warehouse of a promotions company in nearby Camanche, Iowa, but is still stumped as to motive.

A 28-year-old robbery convict with a history of escape attempts tried to tunnel his way to freedom at the prison in Coimbra, Portugal, in June but was intercepted by officials after excavating about 6 feet. He still had 70 feet of tunnel to dig just to clear the building he was housed in, but a larger problem was that the man was apparently direction-challenged: His tunnel was pointed not toward the prison perimeter next to the building but toward a patio well inside the walls.

In 2002, Boston surgeon (and Harvard Medical School graduate) David Arndt, 43, made News of the Weird when his license was suspended for leaving a patient in the middle of an operation in order to run out to cash a check, and shortly after that he was arrested on drug possession and underage-sex charges, which are still pending. He was arrested again in 2003 when he allegedly received a pink, phallus-shaped Mexican pinata filled with an estimated $100,000 worth of crystal methamphetamine. In August 2004, a federal magistrate once again denied him bail on that charge, and anyway, he would have had trouble making bail since his parents, who put their house on the line to bail him out earlier, said they would no longer help him.

Stephen P. Linnen, 33, who was a lawyer for the Ohio House Republican state legislators' caucus, was sentenced in September to 18 months in prison after pleading guilty to 53 misdemeanors, including 40 times springing out from hiding places while naked and photographing the faces of women reacting to the surprise (and also for fondling 13 of them). However, the judge refused to label Linnen a "sexual offender" and said he poses "absolutely no risk to public safety."

Three of these four things really happened, just recently. Are you cynical enough to figure out the made-up story? (a) A zoo in Alaska announced it will build a special treadmill for its overweight elephant to exercise on. (b) A couple rented out a pornography store in Mannheim, Germany, for their wedding, since they had first met at the store when she rang up his purchases as a cashier. (c) Surveillance cameras at a London animal shelter revealed that one dog was using his teeth to unlock his cage and those of his pals so they could roam the premises night after night. (d) Owners of buildings across the street from Chicago's Wrigley Field earned more than $15 million this season charging people to watch Cubs' games from their roofs.

Answer to Almost All True: (b) is not true, as far as I know.

(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa FL 33679 or WeirdNews@earthlink.net or go to www.NewsoftheWeird.com.)

According to an August Washington Post profile, Maura Hall of Washington, D.C., has spent more than $25,000 (an amount which a United Nations food program says will feed 350 Third World children for a year) for a kidney transplant and post-operative care for "Lily," her longhaired gray cat. (Among the post-op procedures: weekly, $200 blood tests for the rest of her life.) Hall said she encounters hostility from not only those who disagree with her priorities, but also other pet owners who feel guilty that they can't afford such expensive care. (Also, an August BBC News dispatch from Brazil reported on the various cosmetic procedures available for dogs and other pets, such as wrinkle reduction, eyebrow correction and even full face-lifts, but which, fortunately, are less expensive than a kidney transplant, e.g., about US$75 to make drooping ears un-droop.)

Sales recently passed 1.8 million units for German inventor Alex Benkhardt's "WC Ghost," a toilet voice alarm, activated when the seat is lifted, which scolds a man who tries to urinate while standing up. It is a difficult sell for some Germans, though, in that a slang word for "wimp" (sitzpinkler) is, literally, a man who sits to urinate. The scolding German voice resembles Chancellor Gerhard Schroder's, and the planned British version might use a voice resembling the queen's. And in the Netherlands, artist Leonard van Munster outfitted toilets in an Amsterdam cafe with more versatile sensors, able not only to admonish stand-up urinators but to offer, for example, anti-smoking messages if it detects that the user is lighting up.

In August, The Washington Post profiled a staunch pillar of the community of Kalispell, Mont., Richard A. Dasen Sr., who is widely respected for the many good things he has done for the town and its citizens over the last 40 years. However, according to recent revelations, his beneficence is marred by one eccentricity (which has resulted in a criminal charge): In the course of counseling the many local women who have come to him for help, he has spent well over a million dollars (at $1,000 to $6,000 per episode) in gifts to some of the women in exchange for sex (including, allegedly, one who was underage).

In the village of Ceres, South Africa, in August, the family and friends of David Masenta staged a posthumous matrimonial ceremony so they could remember him forever as married to his beloved fiancee, Mgwanini Molomo. Actual marriage had become impossible because Masenta murdered the pregnant Molomo and then killed himself.

-- California's Budget Crisis, Explained: In August, the state legislature reached a compromise in a long-standing, intensely debated issue with the state's owners of pet ferrets. Though the animals are banned by the state as crop menaces, the legislation would grant legal status to all existing pet ferrets whose owners pay a $75-per-head fee. However, even though the state desperately needs the revenue, the money raised cannot be used for anything except a study to determine whether the state can tolerate more ferrets.

-- Heavy rains around Dunn, N.C., in mid-August pounded soap-based runoff from the H&H Products facility just off U.S. 301, creating an awesome wall of white bubbles at least 20 feet high that obscured not only Jonesboro Road but the telephone poles alongside. A few drivers tried to go through the mess, but most avoided it until firefighters cleared the foam to the side of the road with their hoses.

-- Three Michigan entrepreneurs, alarmed at continuing bad news about childhood obesity, have begun selling "My Kid's First Coach" on DVD, featuring exercise regimens for children, beginning at age 6 weeks. (The youngest work on "flexibility and muscle awareness," with the parent actually guiding the child through the movements yet familiarizing the child with the sensations, advancing in perhaps a year to batting a ball or walking to follow a piece of tape on the floor.)

-- In August, the International Paralympic Committee rejected quadriplegic British rugby player Mark Fosbrook for the upcoming Paralympics because he is too able-bodied. Fosbrook has no feet, and two fingers at the end of each arm, but he was rated 4.0 in functionality, with 3.5 the highest level allowed to compete.

(1) Michael J. Sterkins, 51, was arrested in Lockport, La., in July and charged as the man who, in five incidents, grabbed girls and women in cemeteries and cut off their ponytails. (One ponytail was recovered from his home, with the ends glued, placed underneath the Bible at his bedside.) (2) Among the evidence found in a search of Sung Koo Kim's home in Tigard, Ore., in June (Kim is a suspect in the disappearance of a female Brigham Young University student): 1,000 pairs of women's underwear, bagged, with some labeled as to which college dorm and woman it came from, and bags of clothes-dryer lint, labeled as to the campus laundry room of origin.

At an August hearing in Calgary, Alberta, in which four prostitutes testified against a 17-year-old male customer who had allegedly committed post-sex armed robbery against them, one of the four described the incident that eventually led to the youth's capture. While the boy held a dagger to the woman's chest and rummaged through her purse, he came upon her recent eviction notice, prompting him to ask her if she would like to rent the basement apartment in his home (and he gave her his phone number).

Once again, housekeepers at a museum mistook part of an art installation for ordinary garbage and tossed it out (this time, a bag of newspapers that was part of Gustav Metzger's "Re-creation of First Public Demonstration of Auto-Destructive Art" at London's Tate Britain gallery, in August). And once again, a suicidal man leaped to his death off a building but landed on a pedestrian, killing him, too (this time, in Nishinomiya, Hyogo, Japan, in August).

In August, Kenneth Davis, 42, saw a wild, 6-foot-long blacksnake in his neighborhood in Lawrence Township, N.J., and decided to coax it, probably as a joke, toward the residence of his friend Michael File. Michael's father saw the snake in his yard and stomped it to death, angering Davis, who knocked the father down. Michael File came to his dad's defense, but Davis picked up the snake, twirled it over his head, and began to beat Michael with it. Michael File then grabbed a baseball bat and hit Davis just as police and rescue workers arrived. (According to police, alcohol was involved.)

Three of these four things really happened, just recently. Are you cynical enough to figure out the made-up story?

(a) A judge in California told juror-candidates that if they were embarrassed to admit that they couldn't be fair, just to make up another excuse, and he'd let them go.

(b) Australia's tax agency signed up as a sponsor of this year's awards pageant for the country's pornography and prostitution industry.

(c) The insurer Lloyd's of London wrote a policy on a male model that would pay off if accident or illness caused him to lose 85 percent of his chest hair.

(d) A court in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, approved the forcible implanting of a radio frequency identification tag in the arms of a man's two wives so he can monitor their whereabouts.

Thanks This Week to Mike Mendenhall, Karen Donofrio, Corey Newton, Melanie Collison, Shankar Unni, Leslie Stewart, Chris Knisely, Gary Goldberg, Larry Alexander, Joy Sargent, and Bea Westrate, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa FL 33679 or WeirdNews@earthlink.net or go to www.NewsoftheWeird.com.)