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News of the Weird


October 16, 2008
ANIMAL LOVERS

The world's most extensive array of animal "rights" took effect in Switzerland in September. Dog owners must take, at their own expense, classes in pet care (and anglers must take a class in humane treatment of fish). Animals listed as "social" (including goldfish, hamsters, sheep, goats, yaks) must be kept with or near another of their species. Goldfish must have some "privacy," e.g., no completely transparent tanks, and can only be killed humanely (never flushed alive). Even mud-loving pigs are entitled to showers. Yet, Swiss animal rights activists complained that the country still permits trading in cat fur (supposedly a pain-reliever for rheumatism), and that some new protections (for example, for rhinoceroses) are still inadequate.



MORE ANIMAL LOVERS

In August two British couples were given sanctions by local councils because their loud, long sex sessions disturbed neighbors. Steve and Caroline Cartwright were issued a noise abatement order by the Sunderland City Council (Caroline: "I do admit I scream and make lots of noise"), and Kerry Norris was fined by the Brighton and Hove City Council for violating a previous sex-noise order with her boyfriend Adam Hinton (a neighbor said their headboard bangs against the wall until 6 a.m.). (Also in August, a neighbor of a swingers' party house in Des Moines, Wash., told a Seattle Times reporter that cries of ecstasy from the house sometimes sound "like a raccoon dying.") 

AND STILL MORE ANIMAL LOVERS

Also, Some Animals Have Good Sex Lives: Officers responding to a neighbor's report of domestic violence in a subdivision near Payson, Ariz., in September decided that the "fight" the neighbor heard was the high-pitched mating scream of a male elk. And an August police search near Linz, Germany, was called off after the "bloodcurdling" screams reported as a woman in distress were actually the mating cries of a badger. And officials at the Bristol Zoo in England promised neighbors they would temporarily house gibbons inside during the night because of their loud mating duets. 



WHAT'S IN A MIDDLE NAME?

Arrested recently and awaiting trial for murder: Nathaniel Wayne Lee, Attalla, Ala. (September); Michael Wayne Wood Sr. (arrested in Michigan in August as a fugitive from a 2005 Oklahoma murder warrant); Jeffrey Wayne Riebe, Myrtle Beach, S.C. (August); Barry Wayne Kaalund, Durham, N.C. (August); Joseph Wayne Keeler, Largo, Fla. (August). Captured after escaping while serving time for murder: Marlow Wayne Reynolds, Rosharon, Texas (September). Fugitive warrant issued: suspected murderer Larry Wayne Brucke Jr., Lenoir, N.C. (September).

HANG TIME

Daytime burglar John Pearce, 32, was arrested in Dartford, England, in August after getting his foot caught in a window and hanging upside down for over an hour in full view of congregating (and taunting) neighbors before police arrived. However, in Chester Township, Pa., in July, scrap-metal burglar Charles Ancrum, 50, beat that record, hanging from a window for an entire weekend, dead, after he broke his neck attempting to climb into a residential garage. (While sticking his head through a small window, he fell off the sawhorse he was standing on.) MTW

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