News of the Weird

LEAD STORY -- Fine Points of the Law

Marc Jaisli, a councilmember in Buchs, Switzerland, was fined $7,390 after he purchased pink plastic water pistols for his godchildren, the Associated Press reported on March 11. Doing so violated the country's weapons law, prosecutors said. They ruled that even though the pistols were imitations, "they could be confused for real firearms due to their appearance." Jaisli said he hadn't been aware of the violation but paid the fine. [AP, 3/11/2025]

Rude

A German soccer match on Feb. 23 was abruptly canceled after an unexpected incident on the field, NationalWorld reported. As the referee was checking players' IDs while they warmed up, the child of one player "came closer and closer to me, then suddenly -- to my complete surprise -- gave me a sharp bite in my left testicle," said referee Stefan Kahler. "I did not start the game, because of the pain I was in and the situation. It was the child of one of the FC Taxi players who was to blame." FC Taxi II and Rot-Weiss Mulheim III will have their match rescheduled for later in the season. [NationalWorld, 2/27/2025]

Smooth Reactions

The Top Secret Comedy Club in London will no longer admit audience members who have undergone Botox injections, United Press International reported on March 10. "I've had numerous complaints from performers who find it increasingly challenging to gauge audience engagement and bounce off their reactions," said owner Mark Rothman. "Comedy thrives on connection, and facial expressions play a huge part. ... Frozen faces from Botox impact the entire atmosphere." Show attendees will be submitted to an expression check at the door. [UPI, 3/10/2025]

Just Desserts

On March 6, the state of Texas charged Amber Paige Laudermilk, 34, with abuse of a corpse, the Austin American-Statesman reported. The court filing revealed that Laudermilk, an embalmer at Memorial Mortuary and Crematory in Houston, allegedly used a scalpel to castrate the decedent, Charles Roy Rodriguez, 58, a registered sex offender who lived in Brookside Village, Texas. She then stuffed his sex organ into his mouth and told an embalming student who witnessed the mutilation, "You didn't see anything." Laudermilk faces six months to two years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000. [Austin American-Statesman, 3/12/2025]

Saw That Coming

An unnamed man in Memphis, Tennessee, learned a pointed lesson on March 10 when his dog, Oreo, jumped into his bed and got his paw stuck in the trigger guard of the man's loaded gun, FOX13-TV reported. The gun fired a bullet that grazed the man's left thigh, which was treated at a hospital. "The dog is a playful dog, and he likes to jump around and stuff like that, and it just went off," said the man's girlfriend, who was also in the bed. Police filed an accidental injury report. [FOX13, 3/10/2025]

Irony

The COP30 climate summit scheduled for November in the Brazilian city of Belem is expected to bring more than 50,000 people to the area. So with the goal of easing traffic to the city, the government is building a new four-lane highway through the protected Amazon rainforest, the BBC reported on March 12. Not only are trees being felled, but the project is paving over wetlands. Claudio Verequete, who once harvested acai berries in the rainforest, said the project has destroyed everything. "Our harvest has already been cut down. We no longer have that income to support our family," he said. "For those of us who live on the side of the highway, there will be no benefits," he said, as the highway will not connect to adjacent communities. [BBC, 3/12/2025]

Latest Religious Message

An American Airlines flight from Savannah, Georgia, to Miami was forced to turn back to the airport just after takeoff on March 10, The New York Times reported. Flight attendants first thought passenger Delange Augustin, 31, was having a seizure as he yelled and shook, but it turned out he believed a satanic spirit had invaded the cabin, and he was swallowing rosary beads to ward off the spirit. During a struggle, he kicked one attendant so hard they tumbled into the window on the other side of the plane. After landing, Augustin went to the front of the plane and started throwing punches at flight attendants. Other passengers wrestled him and his sister, who was flying with him, to the floor. The sister told law enforcement that they'd been traveling to Haiti to "flee religious attacks of a spiritual nature." Augustin had told her that "Satan's disciples had followed them onto the plane and the legion did not want the Augustins to make it to Haiti." The swallowed beads were a "weapon of strength" against the persecution, he said. He was charged with misdemeanor battery and felony criminal property damage. [New York Times, 3/12/2025]

Unclear on the Concept

Air India is begging passengers to "use lavatories only for purposes they are meant for," the New York Post reported, after a flight from Chicago to Delhi on March 5 had to return to O'Hare. During that journey, passengers flushed plastic bags, rags and clothing down the toilets, putting eight of the 12 lavatories out of order. The plane was over Greenland when it turned back to Chicago, five hours into the 14-hour flight. "The decision to divert was taken entirely in the interest of passenger comfort and safety," Air India reps said. "Our teams have previously also found objects such as blankets, innerwear and diapers," they said. [New York Post, 3/12/2025]

Americans Abroad

Instagram influencer and "outdoor enthusiast" Sam Jones may lose her visa for Australia after she posted a video of her grabbing a wild baby wombat from its distressed mother, the BBC reported. The post on March 11 has since been deleted from her Instagram account. Australia's Prime Minister Anthony Albanese suggested she "take a baby crocodile from its mother and see how you go there." In the video, Jones carries the hissing and struggling joey to a car, saying, "I caught a baby wombat!" as the mother chases her. She then puts the joey back down beside the road. But wombat experts are unamused. "Snatching a screaming baby wombat from their mother is not just appalling, it's very possibly illegal under state or national laws," said Suzanne Milthorpe of World Animal Protection Australia. [BBC, 3/13/2025]

The Foreign Press

The South China Morning Post reported on March 7 that online shops are selling "bank soil" -- dirt dug up outside major Chinese banks that is said to bring wealth and good fortune to buyers. The price can be as high as $120 per portion. The soil is harvested from potted plants in bank lobbies or green areas outside the buildings. A sales rep claimed, "This soil ... is believed to enhance wealth and dissolve bad energy, though we cannot scientifically prove this." They went on to say the soil is collected at night, while another vendor said their dirt is collected at noon. One commenter asked, "I live next to a bank, so why has my fortune not improved?" [SCMP, 3/7/2025]

Looking for love? If you're in Dodauer Forest in northern Germany, you're in luck. The Associated Press reported on March 4 about the Bridegroom's Oak, a 500-year-old tree that has served as a mailbox for the lovelorn for over a century. The custom originated with a couple whose relationship was opposed by the woman's father; they left messages for each other in the tree's knothole and eventually married in 1892. Here's how it works: People send a letter (address: Brautigamseiche, Dodauer Forest, 23701 Eutin, Germany), and the postmaster delivers it to the tree. Visitors can climb a 10-foot ladder to retrieve a few letters, leaf through them and choose a pen pal. "The resulting pen pal relationships have even led to a few marriages," noted the postal service. [AP, 3/4/2025]

Bright Idea

James Coxall, 42, of Castle Camps, a village in Cambridgeshire, England, was sick of driving around -- and sometimes driving into -- an 8-foot-long, 4-inch-deep pothole that had been in the road for more than a year, The Washington Post reported. So Coxall, a carpenter, repurposed a pair of jeans his daughter had grown out of, filling the legs with wood and old shirts and attaching some shoes at the hems. Then he fashioned an anchor to hold the contraption upright -- or upside down, as it were -- and put it in the pothole, so that it looked like someone was head-down in the hole. He thought it might spur some action on the hole, and indeed, on Feb. 27, the county filled the hole. "They fixed the hole," Coxall said. "They just got another several million to do in Cambridgeshire." [Washington Post, 2/27/2025]

Surprise!

Dean Harrison and two of his friends were fishing on his open-top boat on Feb. 28 when a 900-pound bottlenose dolphin crashed onto the 16-foot vessel, the Associated Press reported. The men were along the far north coast of New Zealand's North Island when they saw dolphins playing nearby. "This one decided to jump on board and say hello," Harrison said. The 11-foot-long dolphin's wild movements snapped "every single fishing rod we had in the boat," Harrison said, and severely damaged the bow. The animal was stuck, so the men alerted New Zealand's conservation agency, which directed them to a boat ramp an hour away. While they motored toward help, they kept the dolphin wet with a hose and a towel. At the ramp, members of the Maori tribe prayed for the dolphin, which they named Tohu, which means "sign." Harrison has also renamed his boat Tohu. [AP, 3/5/2025]

Questionable Judgment

Newsweek reported on March 5 that a Reddit post has blown up. The post details a stunt that landed a man and his brother-in-law in small claims court over medical bills of more than $2,000. While the poster was napping in a hammock with his shirt off, his BIL filled his navel with super glue, he said. When he awoke, the glue was dry, and he was hesitant to aggressively try to remove it because of scars from an earlier gall bladder surgery. The BIL "thought it was funny right up until we left for the emergency room," the poster wrote. But after the BIL wouldn't cover his medical bills, the poster won in court. "This has caused a major rift in my family," he wrote. "My wife is upset, and her family thinks I overreacted." But Redditers are on his side: "This was straight-up malicious. This wasn't a prank," one wrote. [Newsweek, 3/5/2025]

Irony

CTV News reported that three framed paintings were stolen from St. Andrew's Church in Little Steeping, England, on Feb. 23. One was a painting of the Lord's Prayer; the second depicted Moses delivering the Ten Commandments; and the third illustrated the commandments -- including "Thou Shalt Not Steal." While the church was unclear about the value of the paintings, they held "sentimental" value to the parishioners. [CTV News, 3/3/2025]

Weird Science

Li Zhang, a professor of physiology and neuroscience at the University of Southern California, has authored a study showing that laboratory mice would leap into action to help their companions who were incapacitated, NPR reported on March 2. Their behavior included biting the unconscious mouse, biting its tongue and licking its eyes -- and "eventually pulling the tongue out of the mouth of this unconscious one" to clear its airway, Zhang said. The response was much stronger for mice that had been caged together for a long time, he said. [NPR, 3/2/2025]

Saw That Coming

Jordan Dove, 34, of Lugoff, South Carolina, and his daughter stopped by his uncle's home in Saint Matthews, South Carolina, on Feb. 24 to check on it, WIS-TV reported. The uncle, Alfonzo Brown, is incarcerated in Maryland. But as they approached the front door, the daughter said, they heard sounds "similar to fireworks," and she noticed her father had been shot. Thomas Summers, the Calhoun County sheriff, said Brown had booby-trapped his home by screwing a shotgun inside the home, pointed toward the door. "He knew he would be on the run, he knew that he would be tracked back to Calhoun County, he knew that we would be coming out to get him, and I think he set it up for us," Summers said. Unfortunately, his nephew died at the hospital. Summers said Brown would be charged with murder and possession of a weapon by a convicted felon. "This is a horrible thing, a horrible thing," Summers said. [WIS, 2/26/2025]

Great Art

-- When performance artist Marco Evaristti installed three piglets in a cage as an art installation in Copenhagen, he was hoping to raise awareness of the suffering caused by mass meat production in Denmark, Sky News reported on March 6. The piglets were being denied food and water and were intended to starve to death in the show, called And Now You Care. But animal rights activists, assisted by Evaristti's friend Caspar Steffensen, stole the pigs from the exhibition. "I was very disappointed when Caspar told me ... that he was involved in the theft," Evaristti said. "But then I thought about it for a few hours and realized that at least this way, the piglets would have a happy life." The artist said he'll revive the exhibition but will try to get dead piglets from meat processing plants and present them to the public. "I want to display them in a transparent refrigerator," he said. "I'm willing to pay a high price." [Sky News, 3/6/2025]

-- At the Goldin auction house in Runnemede, New Jersey, a Cheeto shaped like the Pokemon Charizard sold on March 2 for $72,000, the Associated Press reported. The "3-inch-long Flamin' Hot Cheeto ... affixed to a customized Pokemon card and encapsulated in a clear card storage box" was discovered and preserved sometime between 2018 and 2022. Sixty people bid on the item. Sixty. [AP, 3/5/2025]

Animal Antics

Aimee Preece of Carrick, Australia, got up from bed to let her dogs out in early March, then decided to make a bathroom stop, ABC News reported on March 5. But while she was relieving herself, a Tasmanian devil ran into the bathroom, chased by the dogs, and hid behind the toilet. "I've never seen one that close," Preece said. She trapped the animal in the bathroom, then got on social media for help. Olivia Dykstra, a catcher of snakes (and other critters), responded, using a snake bag and a broom to wrangle the devil. The bathroom didn't fare so well: "There was nothing in that bathroom that had not been upset, kicked off shelves, you name it," Dykstra said. She delivered the devil to an area where they're often sighted. [ABC News, 3/5/2025]

The owner of a Brazilian restaurant in Altrincham, England, was stumped on Feb. 20 after a sink worth 150 British pounds disappeared from the women's restroom, The Manchester Evening News reported. The theft was noted during a routine restroom inspection, said Robert Melman, and when staff reviewed the CCTV, they saw a woman come into the restaurant and head straight for the bathroom. Moments later, she walked out with something big in her bag. "I've had people steal lots of things over the years," Melman said, "but never something like this. This is quite unusual. All we could do was laugh." [Manchester Evening News, 2/24/2025]

What's in a Name?

-- When Nontra Null, 41, of Burbank, California, tried to apply for a visa to attend a friend's wedding in India, she kept getting the same response: The computer couldn't process the application. Turns out "null" is a troublesome name when it comes to filling out online forms. Yahoo! News reported on Feb. 23 that when "null" is entered in a field, it essentially means, well, nothing. Jan Null, a 75-year-old meteorologist, learned to reserve hotel rooms adding his first initial to his last name, and security auditor Joseph Tartaro, whose vanity license plate reads NULL, keeps getting random traffic tickets from all over the United States. Modern software has addressed the problem, but not everyone has upgraded, one tech researcher noted. [Yahoo! News, 2/23/2025]

-- Jason Kilburn of Omaha, Nebraska, learned about his daughter, Caroline, only after she was born, he told NBC News on Feb. 24. At her birth in November 2022, her mother had her placed with a foster family, but before that could happen, the baby received a certificate of live birth with a bizarre name: Unakite Thirteen Hotel. Kilburn was told it was a "computer-generated name." Now, as Kilburn raises Caroline and tries to get a birth certificate with her given name, he's stuck in a "circuitous, bureaucratic loop." Without the birth certificate and a Social Security number, he can't secure health insurance or child care. Just to get a routine checkup, Kilburn has to pay about $700 out of pocket. "It's not like I'm trying to pull something here," he said. "This is stuff she's entitled to as any American is." The Social Security Administration has issued a Social Security number, albeit with the original unusual name, and the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services is working with Kilburn to straighten out Caroline's mess. [NBC News, 2/24/2025]

Update

Last week, News of the Weird reported about mysterious QR code stickers appearing on gravestones in Munich, Germany. The denouement is much less interesting than the mystery: The New York Times reported on Feb. 20 that a local business had been contracted to clean and maintain certain graves, and workers had used the stickers to help them keep track of which graves they had worked on. "We are a large company," said Alfred Zanker, a senior manager at the unnamed company. "Everything has to happen in an orderly manner." [New York Times, 2/20/2025]

Phobia Report

Leigh Woodman, 32, of Bristol, England, suffers from a crippling fear of a common condiment: mortuusequusphobia, or fear of ketchup. The New York Post reported on Feb. 20 that Woodman likens seeing ketchup with "being held at gunpoint" on the trauma scale. "I can't even look at a bottle or have it anywhere near me," she said. "It makes me feel panicky." While her mother claims Woodman liked ketchup as a child, she can't remember a time when the popular condiment didn't upset her. [NY Post, 2/20/2025]

It's Good To Have a Hobby?

After authorities in Keene, New Hampshire, arrested Kelli Tedford, 23, on Feb. 21 for urinating on a variety of grocery products at the Monadnock Food Co-op, they discovered that her odd hobby goes back at least four years. NBC News reported that Tedford tainted produce and other items to the tune of $1,500 for the groceries and cleanup. Then police found online videos dating back to 2021 depicting Tedford in multiple locations, relieving herself on produce, surfaces and other objects. She was charged with felony criminal mischief and released on her own recognizance -- so she'll be able to piddle in public until April 7, when she's next due in court. [NBC News, 2/25/2025]

Recent Alarming Headline

Mitchell Ring and his wife, Jennifer Colin, were flying from Melbourne, Australia, to Doha, Qatar, in mid-February when another passenger on their flight collapsed and died, The New York Times reported. The crew tried to revive the woman, but eventually opted to put her body in a wheelchair and try to move it to business class, Ring said -- but the chair wouldn't fit up the aisle. That's when Ring, who was sharing a four-seat row with Colin, was asked to move over so they could place the deceased woman in the seat next to him. Colin ended up moving to a different row: "I'm not a great flyer at the best of times," she said. Ring endured the four remaining hours of the flight sitting next to the corpse, which was covered by a blanket. The International Air Transport Association confirmed that the flight attendants did the right thing; the deceased should be covered and strapped in with a seatbelt. [New York Times, 2/26/2025]

Least Competent Criminals

-- Some people just can't shut up. The California Department of Fish and Wildlife announced on Feb. 25 that it had settled a case of illegal possession of remains of an endangered species, KCRA-TV reported. The investigation began in late 2023 when two plainclothes CDFW officers were on a flight and struck up a conversation with a couple seated near them. The couple admitted to having a green sea turtle skull in their luggage -- a species that is endangered and illegal to possess and transport in the U.S. The couple went on to brag about having taken a mountain lion, protected in California, and a family member's possession of multiple taxidermied mountain lions, a wolverine and wolves. After landing, the officers filed search warrants on the couple's home in Chico, as well as the family member's home in Napa. The searches turned up more illegal species. All three defendants reached plea deals and were convicted of various violations. [KCRA, 2/26/2025]

-- Evelina Fabianski, 18, was looking for revenge (and the return of $700 she said she was owed) on Feb. 26 when she "decided to spray-paint and throw eggs at what she thought was (her ex-boyfriend's) car," said Volusia County (Florida) Sheriff's deputies. Unfortunately, ClickOrlando.com reported, the car she and a minor friend covered with bright yellow paint belonged to a neighbor. Damage to the car amounted to about $5,000; Fabianski was charged with criminal mischief, contributing to the delinquency of a minor, possession of alcohol under age 21 and DUI. [ClickOrlando.com, 2/26/2025]

Creme de la Weird

In early February, the BBC reported on Feb. 26, doctors at the Aiims hospital in Delhi, India, removed a 15kg parasitic twin from the abdomen of a 17-year-old boy. Parasitic twins form when one fetus partially develops while attached to the other. The young man had two fully formed legs, a pelvis, buttocks and external genitalia protruding from his abdomen. Because of his condition, he had not been able to travel or do any physical activity, and he dropped out of school at the eighth grade. "A new world has opened up to me," he said. The parasitic limbs were able to feel pain and changes in temperature. It took a team of doctors just 2 1/2 hours to complete the surgery, and the patient has not experienced any complications. Dr. Asuri Krishna, who led the surgery, said, "Only 40 to 50 cases of parasitic twins have been documented in world medical literature." [BBC, 2/26/2025]