The Mammoth Book of Weird News (Mammoth Books) Read online

  RANDY RHINO TRIES TO MATE WITH CAR

  A rampant rhinoceros tried to mate with a visitor’s car at West Midlands Safari Park in 2004. Dave Alsop had stopped his vehicle in the grounds to take pictures of Sharka, a two-ton white rhino, mating with female Trixie, but the amorous male quickly turned his attentions to the Renault Laguna. He attempted to mount the car from the side, denting the doors and ripping off the wing mirrors before Alsop drove off with a puffing Sharka in hot pursuit. “He was a big boy and obviously aroused,” said Alsop. “He sidled up against us and the next thing I know, he’s banging away at the car and it’s rocking like hell.” A spokesman for the park confirmed that Sharka had something of a reputation as a ladies’ man but admitted that “rhinos are not particularly intelligent animals”.

  DONKEY JAILED FOR ASSAULT

  Blacky the donkey spent three days in jail in Chiapas, southern Mexico, in May 2008 for assault and battery. The animal was locked up along with drunks and other miscreants after it bit and kicked two men. It was finally released when its owner paid a fine of $36 plus the injured men’s hospital fees. Two months earlier, Chiapas police had thrown a bull in the slammer after it devoured corn crops and destroyed two wooden vending stands.

  COWS EAT AIRPLANE

  While visiting friends in 2004, Tony Cooper and Lisa Kingscott landed their 58-year-old, four-seater Auster J1N light aircraft in an isolated field at Kentchurch, near Hereford. They thought it would be perfectly safe there, but had reckoned without a group of hungry heifers. For when the owners returned to the field ready to make their journey home to Wiltshire, they found that cows had munched their way through the aircraft’s fuselage, leaving the plane grounded with $15,000 of damage. After being forced to dismantle the plane and take it home by road, Ms Kingscott mused: “The animals only ate the white bits – I don’t know why.”

  SHARK ATTACKS BOY IN BEDROOM

  A 14-year-old boy survived a horrific shark attack in his own bedroom. Sam Hawthorne, from Dudley, near Birmingham, was savaged when he sleepwalked into a long-dead souvenir shark that was hanging on the wall. He was left with the creature – a holiday gift – embedded in his cheek and blood pouring from the wound. His mother was alerted by his screams but it took 15 minutes to prise the shark from Sam’s cheek, leaving him with a nasty scar.

  DEAD SKUNK MAIL CLOSES POST OFFICE

  A post office in Summerville, South Carolina, was evacuated for several hours by emergency services in 2009 after they received a call about a suspicious package that was emitting a “bomb-smelling odour”. But when firefighters examined the box, instead of finding a bomb, they found a dead skunk. “There was a horrible stink,” said one firefighter. “The whole package just stank. At first we didn’t realize what it was until a guy said: ‘I’m expecting a skunk.’” The dead skunk was being delivered to a taxidermist.

  AMERICAN WOMAN IS OBSESSED WITH RABBITS

  When police raided the Hillsboro, Oregon, home of 44-year-old Miriam Sakewitz in October 2006, they found over 150 rabbits roaming around plus 88 dead ones in the freezer. However three months later she was said to have broken into the facility where the survivors were being cared for and stolen most of them back. She was subsequently found in Chehalis, Washington, with eight live rabbits and two dead ones in her car. Another 130 rabbits were recovered at a nearby horse farm. Charged with animal neglect, she was sentenced to five years’ probation and was banned from owning or controlling animals. She was ordered not to go within 100 yards of a rabbit.

  In the summer of 2007, Sakewitz was sentenced to three days in jail for violating her probation by keeping a rabbit in her house. Probation officer Susan Ranger said Sakewitz had cancelled counselling sessions and refused to open the door for unannounced visits. On one occasion when she did manage to gain entry, Ranger said she found no rabbits but did notice a half-empty ten-pound bag of carrots.

  Having apparently kept her nose clean for two years, Sakewitz was arrested again in June 2009 after a maintenance worker summoned to her Portland hotel room to fix a broken television set saw a number of rabbits hopping around. Animal control officers removed eight adult rabbits, five young and a dead one from the hotel room. The judge sentenced her to 90 days in jail. The “Bunny Lady” was back in the hutch.

  TURKEYS FOUND STUFFED WITH COCAINE

  Two turkeys were cut open by drug smugglers and stuffed with five kilos of cocaine. Acting on a tip-off, police in Peru stopped a bus outside the city of Tarapoto and discovered two bloated turkeys in a crate. Lifting up the feathers in the chest area they noticed a handmade seam, and when a vet opened the stitching on the birds, he extracted a total of 28 plastic capsules containing cocaine. The turkeys were said to be recovering well from their ordeal.

  TALKING PARROT ONLY SPEAKS POLISH

  Hayley Wilson paid over $600 for a talking parrot in Crediton, Devon – and then discovered that because of its previous owner the bird could only speak Polish.

  GUINEA PIG BREAKS OUT FOR NIGHT OF RAMPANT SEX

  A male guinea pig called Sooty had a night to remember in 2000 after escaping from his pen and tunnelling into a cage of 24 females. Two months later, he was the proud father of 43 offspring. Carol Feehan, owner of Little Friend’s Farm in Pontypridd, South Wales, said: “We knew that he had gone missing after wriggling through the bars of his cage. We looked for him everywhere but never thought of checking the pen where we keep 24 females. We did a head count and found 25 guinea pigs – Sooty was fast asleep in the corner. He was absolutely shattered and when we put him back in his cage, he slept for two days.” She added: “I’m sure a lot of men will be looking at Sooty with envy.”

  MONKEY KILLS CRUEL OWNER WITH COCONUT

  A monkey that had been forced to climb trees to pick coconuts finally exacted revenge on his tyrannical Thai owner by hurling a coconut from the top of a tree with such force that it killed the man. Leilit Janchoom had employed the monkey – named Brother Kwan — to pick coconuts which he would then sell. However witnesses said he was a hard taskmaster and if the monkey refused to climb trees, Janchoom would hit him. According to reports, the monkey eventually decided enough was enough and planned his bloody retribution. The dead man’s wife said the monkey had “seemed lovable” when they bought him.

  SAY IT WITH SHEEP

  Instead of flowers, a Brazilian teenager came up with a novel Valentine’s Day gift for his girlfriend – a pregnant sheep. Frederico Skwara bought Juliana Magalhaes the ewe – called Waffle – after first checking with the girl’s mother that she was enthusiastic about welcoming a sheep into the family home.

  POLICE FIND 300 DEAD CATS IN FREEZER

  Police in Sacramento, California, discovered 300 dead cats crammed into three freezers at the home of a 47-year-old man. They also found 30 live cats and the man’s 81-year-old mother living in the house.

  PANDAS VIEW PORN

  Chinese scientists claimed to have sparked a baby boom among giant pandas by showing them DVDs of other pandas mating. Pandas are notoriously poor breeders but the “panda porn” programme seemed to pay off with 31 cubs being born in captivity in China in the first ten months of 2006, compared to just 12 the previous year.

  STREET SWEEPER SUCKS UP DOG

  A truck sweeping the streets of New York City sucked a dog to its death in 2008. Robert Machin had just finished walking his two Boston terriers and was about to load them into his car when he turned around to see one of the dogs, Ginger, being swallowed by the sweeping machine’s round bristles.

  PROTECTIVE RABBIT SCARES AWAY OWNER’S BOYFRIENDS

  A jealous pet rabbit did its utmost to ruin owner Ruth Galloway’s love life. Normally calm and placid, Rocky reacted badly when any boy became affectionate with the 23-year-old graphic designer and saw off four would-be suitors in just six months. Ruth allowed Rocky to roam the house in Birmingham, England, when male friends came to visit but as soon they started getting amorous, he would bite, scratch and nip their ankles. One boyfriend picked up Rocky an
d had his finger bitten, and another beau was chewed as he tried to feed him carrots. Ruth said: “Rocky may look all cute and fluffy but under the cuddly exterior lies an absolute psycho. It’s obviously some kind of a macho male rabbit thing where he can’t stand men getting near me. I can’t cage him now though – Rocky and I come as a couple. I think he’ll know when I find the right guy.” One of Ruth’s former boyfriends, James Phillips, commented: “He’s a savage. It was like having a rottweiller in the house. Ruth’s a lovely girl but I stopped seeing her because of the thing. In the end it was me or Rocky – and I got out.”

  ELEPHANT ROBS MOTORISTS

  In 2007 it was reported that an elephant in India was deliberately blocking the road and refusing to allow drivers to pass until they gave it food. Motorists in the state of Orissa were forced to stop by the elephant which then searched inside the vehicle with its trunk for any tasty snacks. One victim said: “If you are carrying vegetables and bananas inside your vehicle, then it will gulp them and allow you to go. But if you do not wind down your window or open the vehicle door, the elephant will stand in front of the car until you allow him to carry out his inspection.”

  MAN SURPRISED TO BE BITTEN AFTER PUTTING RATTLESNAKE HEAD IN MOUTH

  Showing off to friends after a few drinks, Matt Wilkenson, from Portland, Oregon, decided to put the head of one of his pet rattlesnakes in his mouth. But he nearly died when the snake bit him, putting him in a coma for three days. “It’s actually kind of my own stupid fault,” he admitted later.

  LAWYER CLAIMS CLIENT’S ROOSTER OWNED DRUGS AND GUN

  A creative lawyer told a court in the Philippines that 67 kilos of cocaine and a gun found in a rooster’s cage belonged to the bird and not his client. Attorney Manuel Urbina insisted: “The drugs were in the possession of a rooster and two hens, and the law is very clear that whoever is in possession of the drugs is the one who should be accused.”

  WOMAN ACCIDENTALLY POSTS CAT

  Edith Schonberg, from Rosdorf, Germany, accidentally sent her cat Felix in the mail after the animal sneaked unnoticed into a parcel that she was sending to her nephew. Felix was eventually freed when a worker at the sorting office heard the parcel miaowing.

  SUICIDAL SHEEP LANDS ON WOMAN’S HEAD

  An Austrian woman was taken to hospital with severe bruising in 2001 after a sheep jumped 33 feet from a railway bridge in Braunau and landed on her head. The ram was one of a number of animals that had broken out of a field but while the rest of the sheep were rounded up by a combination of farmworkers and police officers, this one beast decided to risk all by plunging from the bridge. A local police inspector said: “It panicked and leaped off the edge of the bridge. It did not fall or anything, my men said it actually jumped off, ten metres or so to the ground. It was practically suicide.” The unfortunate woman was walking her dog – appropriately a German Shepherd – on a path beneath the bridge. At the sight of the flying sheep, the dog ran off and hid under a bush.

  MAN SMUGGLES MONKEY UNDER HAT

  A man flying from Lima, Peru, to New York in 2007 smuggled a monkey onto the plane by hiding it under his hat. His fellow passengers were alerted to the deception when the marmoset emerged from beneath the headgear and perched on the man’s ponytail, prompting several to ask him whether he knew he had a monkey on him. Man and monkey were detained on arrival in New York.

  WOMAN THREATENS TO SUE ALLIGATOR

  In 1997, Kim Novacs of West Palm Beach, Florida, announced her intention to file a $1 million lawsuit against an alligator that her husband had killed the year before. The six-foot-long reptile had scared the couple’s young daughter, prompting Keith Novacs to shoot it, for which he was convicted of poaching. Mrs Novacs cited a 1993 Florida court case in which an endangered species was the named plaintiff and she argued that if an animal can be a plaintiff, it can also be a defendant, with the state’s Game and Fish Commission liable for any damages.

  ZOO TIGER FLEES FROM ITS PREY

  A Chinese zoo’s plan to restore a tiger’s natural instincts by putting a live bull in its cage backfired in 2010 when the prey turned hunter. Keepers at Yancheng Zoo put the one-year-old bull into the adult white tiger’s enclosure expecting the big cat to kill and eat the bull, as it would do in the wild. However when the tiger attacked, the bull turned the tables and charged angrily, forcing the tiger to flee in terror, much to the amusement of visitors. A zoo spokesman admitted afterwards that a live bull might have been too much for the tiger, adding: “We will try live chickens next time and build up from there.”

  PIGEON TAKES DIP IN CHOCOLATE FOUNTAIN

  Staff at an Edinburgh confectionery shop got themselves in a flap after a pigeon swooped through an open door and took a dip in their chocolate fountain. They managed to get the bird out of the chocolate and out of the shop but then had to call the Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals because it was unable to fly. Fiona Thorburn took the call on her first day in the job. She said: “I got the call to say there was a chocolate-coated pigeon walking along Rose Street in Edinburgh, and I thought it was some of my colleagues playing a trick on me.” Her fellow SSPCA officer Colin Liddle added: “The chocolate was coated on its wings and right down its back. Because it was in a fountain, the chocolate was softer but by the time it came to us, it had started to set. So we actually just washed it straight away. We’ve had diesel spills, we’ve had oil spills – but never before have we had a chocolate-coated pigeon.”

  DACHSHUND CHEWS OFF OWNER’S TOE

  A 56-year-old Illinois woman woke from a short nap in 2008 to find that her pet dachshund had gnawed off her right big toe. The woman had no feeling in her toes because of nerve damage from diabetes. A veterinarian surmised that a bandage wrapped around the toe because of a healing hangnail might somehow have proved irresistible to little Roscoe.

  LLAMA WANTS TO MATE OUTSIDE HIS SPECIES

  Belgian zookeepers became frustrated with a llama which tried to mate with everything except his partner. Xenos the llama at Antwerp Zoo tried to mount ponies, donkeys and even, somewhat ambitiously, camels, but showed no interest whatsoever in the female llama provided for him. His keeper believed the problem stemmed from the fact that Xenos grew up surrounded by other breeds of animal and did not see his first llama until he was an adult.

  AUSTRALIAN RESTAURANT BANS GAY DOG

  An Australian restaurant was ordered to apologize and pay compensation after barring a blind man because a waiter thought his guide dog was gay. When Ian Jolly’s partner, Chris Lawrence, asked if she could bring a guide dog into the restaurant, the waiter misheard and thought she was asking if gay dogs were allowed. The answer, apparently, was no, and Mr Jolly and his dog Nudge were refused entry to Adelaide’s Thai Spice even though he showed staff a guide dog information card. The restaurant was eventually ordered by the Equal Opportunity Tribunal to pay Mr Jolly $1,800 in compensation. The restaurant owners said: “The staff genuinely believed that Nudge was an ordinary pet dog which had been de-sexed to become a gay dog.”

  CHINESE MAN IS SOLD A PUP

  A Chinese man who was sold a white Pomeranian dog as a puppy was shocked to discover a year later that it was really an Arctic fox. Mr Zhang, of Tunkou, paid over $100 for the “puppy” but became puzzled when it kept biting him, could not bark properly and its tail kept growing longer and longer.

  GOAT SMASHES DOOR AT CALIFORNIA STRIP CLUB

  A goat was so keen to get into a California strip club in 2010 that it barged down the doors before the club had even opened for business. The 150-pound goat was caught on surveillance tape butting and eventually smashing two large glass doors at Lynx Gentlemen’s Club in Coachella. The goat had visited the club the previous day but had been chased off by the owner. A local goat farmer explained that male goats have two things on their minds: eating and females.

  WILD MONKEY GIVES POLICE THE SLIP

  A wild monkey outwitted the entire Tokyo police force in the autumn of 2008. The monkey – a Japanese mac
aque – was spotted running through crowded train stations and even urinating in public, but always managed to escape before police could catch it. In one weekend alone, there were ten sightings of the animal, which is believed to have hitched a train ride from nearby mountains to the city. One officer summed up the frustration of the police. “This monkey is driving us crazy,” he said. “It’s so agile, and we only have nets.”

  GRIEVING FAMILY BURY WRONG CAT

  After staging a special burial service for their dead cat, a Scottish family returned home to find it alive and well and waiting for its tea. The Wilkersons thought their beloved Mouse had been killed by a car after finding the body of an identical cat near their home in Invergordon. So they wrapped the body in a bag and buried it under a shrub in a friend’s garden. Lou Wilkerson said: “We had a little service for the cat, then laid it to rest. But a few minutes later, Mouse turned up and we realized it wasn’t our cat that we had buried. We have no idea who the dead cat belonged to.”

  DONKEY IS COURT WITNESS

  When Dallas, Texas, oilman John Cantrell became involved in a dispute with his neighbour, attorney Gregory Shamoun, the first witness in their court case was Buddy the donkey. Cantrell claimed Shamoun put Buddy in his backyard to annoy him, but Shamoun maintained that Buddy was there to serve as a surrogate mother for a calf. In a bid to resolve the case and to prove that the law really is an ass, Buddy was led into the courtroom but refused to say a word. Instead he simply twitched his large ears and swatted flies with his tail. Eventually the two men settled their dispute out of court.