A brand-new brown tourist sign in Falmouth helpfully directed visitors to Plymouth Marina. Plymouth is in another county. It lasted two days.
A San Francisco robotics start-up advertised for people to walk its robot dogs for $20 an hour – with the small catch that walkers had to carry any robot that overheated or broke down back to the office.
When police stopped a car on the M74 in Glasgow, they found a lamb called Pablo tucking into a bag of chips on the back seat – and a police dog later found about £14,000 of drugs under the front passenger seat.
London collector Coby Bull has set a Guinness World Records title by opening seven packs of trading cards in one minute while strapped to the top wing of a 1940s biplane above Headcorn Aerodrome in Kent.
A nest of narrow-headed ants – England's rarest ant species – appears to have been dug up and taken from Devon Wildlife Trust's Chudleigh Knighton Heath reserve, the species' last stronghold in England. Police are appealing for information.
Firefighters in Austin, Texas, climbed a ladder and used a hydraulic spreader – the Jaws of Life – to widen a tree hollow and free a raccoon that had got its head stuck. It looked lifeless afterwards, but it was just exhausted.
A male emu at a Suffolk farm has failed to fertilise any of the 14 eggs laid by his one-eyed companion Eyeleen – perhaps because he doesn't fancy her enough. The upside: each egg makes scrambled egg for four.
A red-shouldered hawk found stranded in a driveway near Roanoke, Virginia, had nothing wrong with her – except that weeks of snacking on the neighbours' free-range chickens had made her too heavy to take off.
A Grand Rapids Police Department K-9 called Rocco needed surgery after scoffing garden rocks coated in slow-cooker beef juice. His handler realised how many when he could hear them in the dog's stomach.
Police in Farnworth, Bolton, chased a suspected shed burglar through back gardens at 4am – then found a pair of trainers sticking out of a green wheelie bin. Their sergeant's verdict: a 'rubbish job of hiding'.
A rare northern nutcracker turned up in Mundesley, Norfolk, and so did up to 200 birdwatchers. The buses were diverted, the police brought cones, and one teenager looked out of his window to find 50 cameras pointing at him.
At a rally in Corpus Christi, Texas, Donald Trump acted out an imaginary barbecue – "I love the meat! I love it. Look" – and the clip took over the internet. Jimmy Fallon had a hot dog joke ready.
Police in Manassas Park, Virginia, detained a runaway sheep after a 'brief food pursuit' through a housing estate. No charges yet, but officers suspect 'a few outstanding baaa-violations'.
Our pick of the week's maddest true stories, straight to your inbox. One email a week, zero spam – gorilla's honour.
