Most bagel shops expect the odd early-bird customer. Bagel Dock Express in Southport, North Carolina, got one with scales.

At around 4:30pm last Thursday (29 October), with the shop closed to customers, a 3-foot young alligator crawled in through the open back door. Surveillance video shows it marching in with confidence, sprinting through the kitchen and stopping at the front counter – as if waiting for someone to take its order. “Just walked in like he knew where to go,” the shop wrote on social media.

Southport Waterfront Park, Southport, North Carolina (2023) – not from the day. Photo: DiscoA340 / CC BY-SA 4.0 (via Wikimedia Commons).

Owner Jesse Driscoll was nearby the whole time but busy installing a new oven. When he rounded a corner, the video shows him stop dead, hop across the lobby and grab a chair, like a lion tamer, before dialling 911. The gator, equally startled, backed away looking for a way out.

AI illustration – not the real owner or alligator. (Spot Gaz, our gorilla, hiding somewhere in this picture.)

“It’s just so far out of the ordinary for a bagel shop,” Driscoll told WWAY. “Never in a million years did I think I’d see an alligator.”

Southport Police called in Officer Katie Ward of Animal Protective Services, who caught the gator and took it to a wilderness area. It wasn’t happy about it, but nobody was hurt.

AI illustration – an imagined scene, not the real officer or alligator.

The shop took it in good humour: “Apparently, word of our fresh bagels has made its way into the swamp!” it posted on Facebook. “No injuries, no drama … just one very unusual customer! Fresh bagels. Wild experiences.”

Local police are no strangers to gator call-outs: earlier this year a 12-foot alligator turned up at a Southport woman’s door, and an 8-foot one was caught at a bank drive-thru.

Reported by The News & Observer (Mark Price) and WWAY TV3.

Source: The News & Observer

If you knock someone’s drink flying, the polite thing is to say sorry. LeBron James said sorry – and then tasted it.

During the Philadelphia 76ers’ 126-107 win over the Chicago Bulls on Monday night, the 41-year-old chased a pass from Tyrese Maxey out of bounds in the third quarter, stumbled into the crowd and crashed into a 76ers fan, spilling his wine.

LeBron James in Philadelphia in 2016, when he played for Cleveland – not from Monday’s game. Photo: Ian D’Andrea / CC BY-SA 2.0 (via Wikimedia Commons).

James said “My bad”, took the fan’s cup, had a quick sip, handed it back and ran straight back on court.

AI illustration – not the real player or fan. (Spot Gaz, our gorilla, hiding somewhere in this picture.)

Afterwards, he explained his tasting notes: “I crashed into him, spilled some of his wine. So I wanted to see if it was worth it on my arm and how good it was. It was alright.”

The fan told ESPN’s Kris Rhim he wasn’t bothered. “At the end of the day, he’s another man like me,” he said. And no, he didn’t keep the cup as a souvenir: “I threw that cup in the trash.” He got himself a fresh drink instead.

AI illustration – an imagined scene, not the real player or coach.

James, who finished with 15 points, seven rebounds and nine assists as the 76ers improved to 7-1, said it was all about enjoying the season: “It’s a long marathon, and if you don’t find ways to have fun throughout — even though you’re working, even though you’re locked in — it can wear on you.”

Reported by AP News, with further reporting by Sportsnet and Yahoo Sports. Fan’s comments to ESPN.

Source: AP News

Fancy a job walking dogs around San Francisco for $20 an hour? There is just one catch: the dogs are robots, and if they conk out, you carry them back.

Robotics start-up Dimensional posted the ad in the Bay Area Jobs group on Facebook, looking for people to walk four-legged robots on outdoor routes around the city for four to six hours at a time. No robotics experience was needed, training was paid, and walkers would be paid straight after each shift.

Stock photo: a Unitree Go1 robot dog in a park in Bucharest, 2023 – not one of Dimensional’s. Photo: Sgt. Amber Edwards / U.S. Army / public domain (via Wikimedia Commons).

The small print was the best bit. Applicants had to be comfortable “safely handling equipment weighing about 33 pounds” – about 15kg – because the robots can overheat or simply stop working mid-walk. When that happens, the walker has to carry the machine back to the office.

AI illustration – not the real walkers or robots. (Spot Gaz, our gorilla, hiding somewhere in this picture.)

The office, fittingly, is in San Francisco’s Dogpatch neighbourhood. The robot dogs are made by the Chinese company Unitree and cost about $2,000 each, and the firm has bought more than 100 robot dogs and 50 humanoid robots, according to The New York Times.

Dogpatch and the bay seen from Potrero Hill, San Francisco, 2025. Photo: Clyde Charles Brown / CC BY-SA 4.0 (via Wikimedia Commons).

So why pay people to walk robots? Dimensional is building an open-source operating system to let AI agents control robots, and human walkers steer the dogs while cameras and sensors gather data. Founder Stash Pomichter told The New York Times: “What we determined from our dog-walking experiment was that agents are still very bad at controlling hardware.” He added: “And humans are still needed in the loop.”

The pay was roughly the going rate for walking real dogs – which, to be fair, rarely need carrying home.

AI illustration – an imagined scene, not the real walkers or robots.

Reported by UPI, with further reporting by Fox Business and Quartz. Originally reported by The New York Times.

Source: UPI

Police officers who pulled over a car on a Glasgow motorway expected the usual questions. They did not expect a lamb in the back, happily working its way through a bag of chips.

The Volkswagen Golf was stopped on the M74 in Glasgow on 22 April 2023. On the back seat sat a lamb called Pablo – named, of all things, after the Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar.

The M74 below Cathcart Road, Glasgow, in 2023 – not the actual stop. Photo: Richard Webb / Geograph / CC BY-SA 2.0 (via Wikimedia Commons).

When the sergeant asked where the lamb had come from, a passenger told him the driver was a “trainee shepherdess”. Asked in court whether there was any evidence of that, the sergeant replied: “No, the lamb at the time was eating a bag of chips left on the back seat. There were no bottles.”

AI illustration – not the real people, lamb or dog. (Spot Gaz, our gorilla, hiding somewhere in this picture.)

Pablo was not the only surprise. A police dog called Billy then found £4,640 of cocaine and £10,050 of heroin – about £14,000 in all – under the front passenger seat.

The pair said they had rescued the lamb from the middle of the road and planned to take him back, as he had markings on his ears. He actually belonged to North Lanrigg Farm in Motherwell, whose owner had not given anyone permission to take him. A charge over the lamb was dropped part-way through the trial.

Stock photo: a Texel lamb with ear tags, 2008 – not Pablo. Photo: Evelyn Simak / Geograph / CC BY-SA 2.0 (via Wikimedia Commons).

Both were found guilty in September of possession with intent to supply. At Glasgow Sheriff Court, the 56-year-old passenger was given 300 hours of unpaid work and a six-month tag, with a curfew from 20:00 to 05:00, avoiding jail. The driver had earlier been banned from driving for 18 months and ordered to do 100 hours of unpaid work.

As for Pablo, he spent 48 to 72 hours on a farm in Ayrshire before going home. The farmer said he was in fine health and happy with “his new pet lamb pals”.

AI illustration – an imagined scene, not the real lamb or farmer.

Reported by BBC News, with further reporting by STV News and the Glasgow Times.

Source: BBC News

Most people open a pack of trading cards sitting at the kitchen table. Coby Bull did it strapped to the top wing of a flying biplane above Kent – and now he has a world record to show for it.

The 33-year-old London collector, who founded the collectables business Edition One, took to the skies on 13 October at Headcorn Aerodrome, near Ashford. Harnessed to the top wing of a 1940s Boeing Stearman biplane about 600ft up, in winds of up to 120mph, he ripped open seven packs of 2025-26 Topps Chrome Update Series Basketball Hobby cards in a single minute – without losing a single card.

Stock photo: Breitling wing walkers on Boeing Stearman biplanes at Oostwold Airshow, the Netherlands, in 2017 – not the actual flight. Photo: Gerard van der Schaaf / CC BY 2.0 (via Wikimedia Commons).

He needed at least six to qualify. Guinness World Records confirmed the next day that seven was enough for the title of most trading card packs opened during a wing walk in one minute.

“Everyone in this hobby knows the feeling of ripping a pack. I wanted to see what it felt like full of adrenaline,” he told What’s The Jam. “My heart was thumping and my hands went totally numb – I was trying my hardest to concentrate. The wind was pulling at every wrapper, and I only had sixty seconds. Seven packs felt like seventy.”

A biplane at Headcorn Aerodrome, Kent, in 2004 – not the record flight. Photo: Dave Bushell / Geograph / CC BY-SA 2.0 (via Wikimedia Commons).

AI illustration – not the real people, cows or plane. (Spot Gaz, our gorilla, hiding somewhere in this picture.)

He admits it is an odd way to spend an afternoon: “People must think I’m a lunatic for standing strapped to the wing of a moving plane just opening cards for the thrill of it.”

Not that it put him off. He went straight back up the same day for a second flight, this time opening cards worth more than $10,000 (about £7,000) – including a rare Mike Trout autograph patch card, one of only five ever made.

AI illustration – an imagined scene, not the real collector or pilot.

It is not his first odd challenge, either: he has already swum to and from Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay and completed a seven-day sleigh challenge across Lapland. He has been collecting since he was 12.

Reported by UPI (Ben Hooper) and What’s The Jam, and confirmed by Guinness World Records.

Source: UPI

Of all the things you could steal from a nature reserve in Devon, somebody appears to have chosen ants. Thousands of them. With a spade.

Devon Wildlife Trust says a nest of narrow-headed ants (Formica exsecta) – England’s rarest ant species – has been taken from its Chudleigh Knighton Heath nature reserve in south Devon. The heath is the species’ last stronghold in England; according to Buglife, only a handful of colonies survive in Scotland, including on the Royal Family’s Balmoral Estate.

Chudleigh Knighton Heath nature reserve, Devon, in 2019. Photo: Derek Harper / Geograph / CC BY-SA 2.0 (via Wikimedia Commons).

Conservation researchers on their regular checks in mid-October found a hollow where a known nest had been, with “clear signs of digging with a spade”. A single nest can hold between 1,000 and 5,000 ants, plus one or more breeding queens that can live for up to 25 years.

Stock photo: a narrow-headed ant nest in the Czech Republic – not the stolen nest. Photo: Lynxlynx1 / CC BY-SA 4.0 (via Wikimedia Commons).

AI illustration – not the real police or ants. (Spot Gaz, our gorilla, hiding somewhere in this picture.)

Julia Balfour, the trust’s species recovery officer, called it a “significant loss for this species” and a crime “every bit as serious as illegal raids on wild bird eggs”. The most recent survey recorded 142 active nests on the reserve, “so every nest matters”. Laura Krusin of the charity Buglife warned that removing nests could have a “catastrophic impact on the population”.

AI illustration – an imagined scene, not a real person.

Whoever took it, the joke stops there: the heath is a Site of Special Scientific Interest. PC Lucy Wyatt of Devon and Cornwall Police’s rural affairs team said SSSIs are “legally protected” and that it is a criminal offence to “intentionally or recklessly damage, destroy, or disturb the protected area”.

Seen anything suspicious? Call Devon and Cornwall Police on 101, quoting crime reference 50260284768.

Reported by BBC News (Britta Zeltmann), The Guardian and Buglife, from Devon Wildlife Trust.

Source: BBC News

Most emergency calls are about people. This one, in Austin, Texas, was about a raccoon’s bottom.

A neighbour called 911 after spotting a raccoon high up a tree with its head wedged firmly in a hollow. Austin firefighters turned up with ladders and the kit they normally use to cut people out of crashed cars.

Stock photo: a raccoon in a tree hollow in Colorado – not the actual raccoon. Photo: USFWS Mountain Prairie / public domain (via Wikimedia Commons).

One firefighter went up a ladder and used a hydraulic spreader – the tool better known as the Jaws of Life – to prise the hole in the tree wider, so the raccoon could finally pull its head out. Crews then lowered it to the ground with a catch pole.

AI illustration. (Spot Gaz, our gorilla, hiding somewhere in this picture.)

Video of the rescue showed the raccoon hanging limp and motionless, and worried viewers asked whether it had survived. The Austin Firefighters Association posted an update: “Raccoon rescue update: He’s OK!” He was “alive and unharmed”, it said – just “understandably tired” after a “long, stressful struggle” – and was handed over to Animal Control.

AI illustration.

The association said the job goes beyond fighting fires, “even when the one in trouble has four legs and a furry tail.”

Stock photo: an Austin fire engine in 2012 – not the crew involved. Photo: J.Köster / CC BY 3.0 (via Wikimedia Commons).

Reported by UPI (Ben Hooper), KXAN and FOX 7 Austin, from posts by the Austin Firefighters Association.

Source: UPI

Love is in the air at Cloverfield Farm in Crowfield, Suffolk. Unfortunately, it seems to be going only one way.

Over the past few weeks Eyeleen the emu has laid 14 eggs. Her companion, a young male called Dexy, hasn’t fertilised a single one. Co-owner Jo Saberton said Dexy was good at helping to sit on the eggs, but added: “I think he’s just very young, maybe he doesn’t fancy Eyeleen enough.” The pair “get on OK”, she said, “but I’m not quite sure we’re ever going to have the patter of little emu feet.”

Stock photo: an emu – not Dexy. Photo: Mike Pennington / CC BY-SA 2.0 (Geograph via Wikimedia Commons), Matlock Farm Park.

The names are a love story of their own. Eyeleen is called that because she lost one of her eyes, and Dexy is named after Dexys Midnight Runners, the band behind Come On Eileen. Jo’s husband Nick wondered whether Eyeleen’s single eye had made Dexy “a bit more fussy” – despite her “long legs”.

AI illustration. (Spot Gaz, our gorilla, hiding somewhere in this picture.)

At least the eggs don’t go to waste. Each one is dark emerald green and roughly the size and weight of 12 chicken eggs, so a single scrambled emu egg feeds four. The couple’s grandsons tried one as a boiled egg with soldiers – it took 35 minutes to boil, and they gave it the thumbs up.

AI illustration.

Stock photo: emu eggs at a Devon farm – not Eyeleen’s. Photo: Roger Cornfoot / CC BY-SA 2.0 (Geograph via Wikimedia Commons).

In the UK, emus usually lay in winter, and it’s the males that do the incubating. Last year the farm did nothing with 28 eggs. Some may just stay on the shelf: “They do look so lovely, you don’t really want to break them because they look like an ornament.”

Reported by BBC News (Connor Bennett and Alice Cunningham).

Source: BBC News

When a hawk turns up sitting in your driveway, refusing to fly, you fear the worst. In Roanoke, Virginia, the truth was much less tragic and much more relatable.

The adult female red-shouldered hawk was found grounded about a mile from the Southwest Virginia Wildlife Center. Vets checked her for broken bones, lead poisoning, eye problems, head injuries, starvation and bruising. Everything was normal. The diagnosis? She was, in the centre’s words, “too darn fat to fly”.

Stock photo: a red-shouldered hawk – not the actual bird. Photo: Paul Danese / CC BY-SA 2.0 (Flickr via Wikimedia Commons).

She weighed over 900g (about 2lb), nearly a pound heavier than a normal female. “We couldn’t even palpate her keel due to the heavy layer of fat covering it,” the centre said.

AI illustration. (Spot Gaz, our gorilla, hiding somewhere in this picture.)

After ruling out a lost falconry bird or someone feeding her, staff asked the finder whether any neighbours kept free-range chickens. A couple of weeks later the answer came back: yes – and they had been vanishing “at an alarming rate”. “This queen was picking off the buffet of easy prey set out before her, eating her fill, and then snoozing in the trees nearby until she was ready to eat again,” the centre said.

AI illustration.

She is now on a weight-loss diet. It’s funny, the centre admitted – unless you’re one of the chickens – but a hawk that can’t fly is an easy target. Its advice: don’t feed wildlife, “directly OR indirectly”, and cover your chicken runs.

Reported by UPI and KTLA, from a post by the Southwest Virginia Wildlife Center.

Source: UPI

Police dogs are trained to sniff out anything. Nobody said anything about eating it.

Rocco, a K-9 with the Grand Rapids Police Department in Michigan, ended up in surgery after an unusual snack. His handler, Austin Diekevers, told WWMT he had “made some old beef sandwiches in a crock pot” (a slow cooker) and threw the scraps over his deck – they usually go to his chickens. Some of the “crock pot juice” landed on his landscaping rocks.

Stock photo: a Wisconsin sheriff’s police dog – not Rocco. Photo: Michael Pereckas / CC BY 2.0 (Flickr via Wikimedia Commons).

In the few minutes it took him to put the slow cooker away, Rocco was chewing the rocks. The vet wasn’t too worried as long as he kept eating and drinking normally. But about a day later Rocco was off his food, and when Diekevers felt his tummy: “I could actually hear the rocks inside of his stomach.”

AI illustration. (Spot Gaz, our gorilla, hiding somewhere in this picture.)

X-rays at the Animal Emergency and Specialty Hospital of Byron Center showed rocks in his stomach, and surgery removed them. “Rocco came through surgery like a champ and spent 24 hours with us before heading home,” the hospital said. It is now inviting guesses on how many rocks came out – no prizes, just bragging rights.

AI illustration.

It’s Rocco’s second emergency this year: in April he impaled his leg on a fire pit and needed blood transfusions. He’s expected back on duty in about a week. As WWMT put it, he “leaves no stone unturned. Or, rocks uneaten.”

Reported by WWMT News Channel 3, with details from UPI.

Source: WWMT News Channel 3

Hide-and-seek has one golden rule: tuck your feet in.

At about 3.50am on Saturday 24 October, Greater Manchester Police officers from the Bolton neighbourhood team were called to reports of a disturbance around Ullswater Drive in Farnworth, Bolton. Police say a group had tried to break into a garden shed and make off with what was inside.

Farnworth, Bolton – not the actual street. Photo: Dave Bevis / CC BY-SA 2.0 (Geograph via Wikimedia Commons).

What followed was a foot chase and a search of the nearby back gardens: sheds, fences, the lot.

AI illustration. (Spot Gaz, our gorilla, hiding somewhere in this picture.)

Then came the breakthrough. Bodycam footage, reported by the Manchester Evening News, shows an officer’s torch landing on a green wheelie bin lying on its side, with a pair of feet poking out of the end. “Out you come now,” says the officer.

A 17-year-old boy was arrested on suspicion of burglary, and a 16-year-old girl on suspicion of attempted burglary. Both have been bailed, nobody has been charged, and police are still trying to identify others involved.

AI illustration.

Sergeant Emily Fogg, of GMP, did not hold back on the marks: “The boy clearly did a rubbish job of hiding from our neighbourhood officers.” She added that her teams would “continue to seek justice for victims of this invasive crime”.

Reported by the Manchester Evening News, with details from The Bolton News and LBC.

Source: Manchester Evening News

One small brown bird. One seaside village. Roughly 200 people with lenses the size of drainpipes.

A northern nutcracker, a crow-family bird that normally lives in places like Siberia, was spotted in a garden in Mundesley, Norfolk, on Friday 23 October. The species had not been recorded in Norfolk since 1968, and had not been widely seen anywhere in the UK since 1991. By Sunday, BBC News reported, around 150 to 200 twitchers had arrived from all over the country.

The same species – not the Mundesley bird. A slender-billed nutcracker in Karpinsk, Russia. Photo: alexey_yabs / CC0 (Wikimedia Commons).

The lanes around Mundesley and Trunch are narrow, and the parking was, let’s say, enthusiastic. Sanders Coaches warned that its CH2, 34 and X55 services might be changed at very short notice because of “a very disruptive slender billed nutcracker (or more so the people double parking everywhere trying to photograph it!)”. It added: “No, we are not ‘running out of excuses’, thank you!”

AI illustration.

The firm also explained why it couldn’t give passengers more precise updates: “Unfortunately fitting one of our bus trackers to the bird would likely constitute a wildlife crime.” Norfolk Police said it had several calls about parking on Trunch Road and Water Lane, and officers put out cones.

AI illustration.

Then the bird landed on the guttering of a house where 17-year-old Max, from Ruislip, was staying. He looked out to find “at least 50” photographers aiming at him. “It looked like they were all taking photos of us,” he told the BBC. His verdict on the star of the show: “It wasn’t a very spectacular-looking bird.”

AI illustration. (Spot Gaz, our gorilla, hiding somewhere in this picture.)

There is a happy ending. Twitcher Wayne Glossop set up a fundraiser for Mundesley Inshore Lifeboat to “give something back”, and it has raised almost £1,500.

Reported by BBC News and BBC News, with details from the Eastern Daily Press.

Source: BBC News

Texas takes its barbecue seriously. So, it turns out, does the President of the United States.

At a midterm rally at the Port of Corpus Christi on Tuesday 27 October, Donald Trump turned his attention to James Talarico, the Democratic candidate for the US Senate in Texas, who had recently been off the campaign trail. Talarico has denied being a vegan. Trump offered his own theory: “I happen to think he was food poisoned by meat because he can’t stand it.”

Then came the performance. “You ever see him go to a barbecue and he’s trying to show,” Trump said, before miming taking a big bite of something invisible: “I love the meat! Ahhh – I love it. Look.” He finished the scene: “Where is he? He’s behind the tent puking.”

AI illustration. (Spot Gaz, our gorilla, hiding somewhere near the smoker.)

According to The Independent, he also told the crowd that Melania had corrected how he says “vegan”, which he blamed on the fact that “I really do like the meat.”

The clip spread quickly online, with one post quoted by The Independent saying simply: “This can’t be real life.”

AI illustration.

Late-night television was waiting. On The Tonight Show, Jimmy Fallon joked that in one speech Trump had lost Texas “and his invite to the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest”.

Reported by The Independent, with details from HuffPost, KRIS 6 News and, for the Fallon quote, TheWrap.

Source: The Independent

Most police chases involve sirens and helicopters. This one involved a sheep and, judging by the emojis, a lettuce.

Officers from the Manassas Park Police Department in Virginia were called to Nancy Street, in the Blooms Crossing neighbourhood, on Wednesday 28 October after a report of a sheep on the loose.

Stock photo – not the actual sheep. Photo: Basotxerri / CC BY-SA 4.0 (Wikimedia Commons).

The woolly suspect was detained, police said, “after a brief food pursuit that led straight into someone’s backyard”, a statement they followed with a running emoji and a lettuce emoji. According to WJLA 7News, the department joked on Facebook that the sheep had been “less than cooperative”, but it was taken into custody “safe and sound” and seemed in good spirits.

AI illustration. (Spot Gaz, our gorilla, hiding somewhere in this garden.)

“No charges have been filed at this time,” the department posted, “but we do suspect a few outstanding baaa-violations.”

AI illustration.

Nobody yet knows where the sheep came from. “If you’re missing your four-legged fugitive,” police said, “contact the Manassas Park Police Department.”

Reported by UPI and WJLA 7News, from posts by the Manassas Park Police Department.

Source: UPI

Most triathletes train for months. This one had about an hour’s notice and no intention of finishing.

Officers from Thames Valley Police’s Windsor Central neighbourhood team were looking for a 51-year-old man wanted over three alleged breaches of his bail conditions, less than 24 hours after a court had released him. After an hour of searching they spotted him, and he was off on a stolen bicycle.

Windsor Castle from The Brocas, Eton. Photo: Sean Davis / CC BY-SA 2.0 (Geograph).

He ditched the bike, which a PCSO grabbed so he couldn’t use it again, and then swam across the River Thames. Undeterred, the PCSO flagged down a passing boat and carried on the chase by water.

AI illustration. (Spot Gaz, our gorilla, hiding somewhere on the boat.)

Then came the cycling leg. A dog handler borrowed the abandoned bike and let Police Dog Chief do the work. “I was pulled along husky and sledge style,” the handler said, “which needless to say required no pedalling from me.” Dog and handler caught up with the man, who was arrested. According to the Daily Mail, he then asked whether the dog had been on the bike, and asked Chief: “Did you enjoy your swim?”

AI illustration.

Police said their video of the chase looked “slightly ridiculous” but insisted nothing had been exaggerated. “Neighbourhood policing,” they said. “Apparently now by land, water and dog-powered bicycle.” The man later admitted shop theft, theft of a bicycle, assault and outraging public decency, and on 19 October was given an 18-month community order at Reading Magistrates’ Court.

Reported by BBC News, with details from ITV News Meridian, the Maidenhead Advertiser and the Daily Mail.

Source: BBC News

Most people who get pulled over for speeding have a decent excuse ready. This driver had a better one: he was technically dead.

On Halloween night, a deputy from the Lee County Sheriff’s Office in Florida stopped a car doing 48mph in a 30mph zone. Behind the wheel was a man dressed as a zombie. The whole thing was caught on the deputy’s body camera.

Illustration. (Spot Gaz, our gorilla, hiding somewhere in this one.)

“You are the fastest zombie on the roadway,” the deputy told him. “Is there a collection of brains you’re attempting to get to?”

The driver, to his credit, was honest about his look, admitting his zombie costume “came out terrible”.

Then came the verdict. “Since I cannot legally give a ticket to someone who is not alive,” the deputy joked, the undead motorist would get only a warning.

Illustration.

He was sent on his way with two requests: slow down, and “don’t eat any brains tonight”.

Reported by CBS12 News, using body-camera footage from the Lee County Sheriff’s Office, with details also from Hoodline.

Source: CBS12 News

Horses are expensive. Stabling in Hackney is tricky. So when actor Cameron Carnegie-Brown, who jousts as Camtholomew the First, and artist Jack Carden fancied a medieval duel, they hired the next best thing: two bright green Lime e-bikes.

The pair put on chainmail, helmets and red and black cloaks, grabbed striped poles for lances and charged at each other in London Fields, east London, trying to knock one another out of the saddle. Hundreds turned up to watch.

AI illustration. (Spot Gaz, our gorilla, hiding somewhere in the crowd.)

Lime was less enchanted. “While we appreciate the medieval spirit, safety must always come first,” the company said. “Lime bikes are designed for getting around the city, not for jousting.”

Naturally, the knights announced a rematch: Lime Bike Jousting 2: No Horses, No Mercy. More than 5,000 people RSVPed within a day, the location was revealed shortly before kick-off, and on Halloween a crowd in armour and fancy dress chanted “joust, joust, joust” while stewards and first aiders kept watch. Hackney Council said it had not given permission. After several rounds, Camtholomew was declared the winner, and the event raised more than £1,000 for charity.

AI illustration.

Even the professionals approve. Andy Deane, captain of the Royal Armouries jousting team in Leeds, called it “absolutely a legitimate form of jousting”, especially “if you can’t afford a horse”.

Reported by BBC News, with details from The Standard, The Telegraph and LBC.

Source: BBC News

Most of us manage a pumpkin on the doorstep and a bowl of sweets we eat ourselves by 7pm. Darren Mackenzie and Karen Pearce, of Hob Moor Road in Yardley, have taken a slightly different approach.

Their semi-detached house in Birmingham has been completely taken over by monsters, skeletons and pumpkins, spilling across the driveway, the garage and the garden. The tour even takes in the downstairs toilet and utility room, which are full of dolls – surely the most frightening use of a downstairs loo since someone first invented the avocado bathroom suite.

It has proved rather popular. “It’s just crazy,” Karen told the BBC. “We’ve had over three thousand through the doors and about five hundred in the queue now.”

The whole thing started last October when Darren decorated the outside of the house. This year, family friends are volunteering as actors to jump out at people.

Entry is free, with an optional donation to the mental health charity Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM). The couple have raised more than £3,000 and are hoping to hit £5,000.

“Everybody struggles a bit with their mental health,” said Darren. “We just wanted everybody to come out, enjoy themselves, put a bit of money in the tin if they can.”

The neighbours, we’re told, have been “fantastic”. Brave of them.

Source: BBC News

Ghost hunters rarely find what they’re looking for. Writer Paul Lee, from King’s Lynn, has managed it – sort of.

For decades, the former RAF Bircham Newton in Norfolk has been the subject of spooky tales: figures in RAF uniform, and the sound of squash being played on empty courts. Because if you’re going to haunt somewhere for eternity, you may as well keep up your cardio.

The stories hit the big time in 1972 when BBC One’s Nationwide ran a report on “the ghost that likes to play squash”. The BBC no longer had a copy, and many assumed it had been wiped. But Lee tracked it down in the British Film Institute’s archives, on the 6 January 1972 edition, recorded off-air on reel-to-reel tape.

“I was so excited!” he told BBC Sounds’ Secret Norfolk.

The footage includes recordings of unexplained noises on the courts, plus a medium solemnly naming three ghostly airmen. Here’s where it unravels. RAF records weren’t available back then; they are now.

“We can say with certainty that every single detail the medium told us was completely wrong,” said Lee. “The three airmen never existed.”

Lee says he keeps a neutral attitude to ghosts and would like people to be more open-minded – but “maybe more critical”. Whoever’s been playing squash in there, it isn’t them.

Source: BBC News

In a summer when British pumpkin growers were grumbling about heat, drought and disappointingly dinky squashes, one patch in Kent went the other way. Very much the other way.

A 420kg (66 stone) pumpkin – officially nicknamed Madam Quexzilla Plumpkin – has been grown at the Secret Garden Centre at Quex Park in Birchington. And it may have had a little help from science.

The site hosts a University of Kent-led project investigating whether microalgae can enrich animal feed and soil to produce healthier plants and food. The algae are farmed in a polytunnel and – here’s the twist – surplus algae was regularly dumped on the neighbouring pumpkin patch.

The university is careful to say the pumpkin wasn’t part of any controlled experiment. But it says the giant’s size and quality “does suggest” the microalgae may have played a role. Which is the most academic way imaginable of saying: well, would you look at that.

Garden centre boss Liam Cowdery said the pumpkin’s wall was about six inches thick when they cut it open, and that it had kept a vivid orange colour – something he’d like to think is down to carotenoids in the algae.

Researchers now plan to trial the Quex Park algae on three farm sites growing winter wheat, spring beans and spinach. Whether any of those earns a name as magnificent as Madam Quexzilla Plumpkin remains to be seen.

Source: BBC News

Staff at the McDonald’s in Wychbold, Worcestershire, have seen a lot come through the drive-thru. A pony, until now, was not on the list.

Eventing rider Nick Holden, from nearby Feckenham, turned up on Sparky – a black-and-white steed of about 14.2 hands, which he reckons sits right on the line between big pony and small horse. That was deliberate: his larger horses, at around 18 hands, wouldn’t clear the height barriers.

The pair waited politely at the speaker. Nobody answered. So they clip-clopped on to the first window until somebody noticed them, which, Holden told the BBC, gave the server “a bit of a shock”. To their eternal credit, staff were “really lovely”, serving up chicken nuggets and fries for the rider and a free bag of apple slices for Sparky.

Holden says he made the same trip on horseback about a decade ago, when he couldn’t drive. His Instagram reel of the return visit has been watched more than 590,000 times.

McDonald’s own guidelines say drive-thrus are for motor vehicles and roadworthy mobility scooters – not pedestrians, cyclists or horse riders. Holden’s defence? Horses were the original mode of transport, so they ought to be exempt.

Frankly, we can’t fault the logic. The pair rounded the day off with a picnic in Hanbury Woods, which is more than most of us manage on a lunch break.

Source: BBC News

Every new job comes with a nickname eventually. One Slough police officer earned his in about three seconds flat.

The officer had only recently moved to Thames Valley Police’s Slough East neighbourhood team. Out on patrol, he detained a man and, during a search, found what looked like an ordinary torch.

AI illustration.

A hollow torch is a classic hiding place for drugs, so, in the words of his own team, he “bravely volunteered to conduct a more thorough examination”.

It was not a torch. It was an electrical stun device, and it delivered what the team called “an unexpected practical demonstration of its capabilities directly to the officer”.

Happily, he wasn’t hurt. The man he’d detained was arrested.

AI illustration.

His colleagues, being police officers, did what any British workplace would do: they gave him a new name. He is now, officially and permanently, PC Sparky.

The team also shared the story online, adding: “We’re confident the nickname will be around considerably longer than any physical effects.”

Reported by the Slough Observer, quoting Slough East Neighbourhood Policing (Thames Valley Police).

Source: Slough Observer

Turtles are not famous for their speed. This pair, however, appear to have made a remarkably quick exit.

Turtle Duo, a bronze sculpture of two turtles by wildlife artist Stephen Rew, was taken from Adrian Hill Fine Art in Stamford at about 14:40 on 3 October, according to Lincolnshire Police. It is worth around £1,850 – which, for anyone keeping score, is a lot of money per turtle.

Gallery owner Adrian Hill said it was the first time anything had been taken in his 23 years in the business. “We like to think we’re very vigilant,” he said. “We’ve never had anything taken before.”

Police have released a CCTV image of a man seen leaving the gallery who they think “may have information that could assist us in our investigation”, and are appealing for help to identify him.

Rew is no small-fry sculptor: he was named Wildlife Artist of the Year 2019 by the David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation, and the gallery says he works with conservation charities to “do his bit” for animals.

Bronze is heavy, turtles are distinctive, and solid metal reptiles are not the easiest thing to shift quietly down the pub. Anyone offered a suspiciously shiny pair should contact Lincolnshire Police.

Source: BBC News

There are few things more awkward for a magician than something vanishing without their permission.

Award-winning close-up magician Matthew Le Mottee was getting ready to perform at the Clayton Hotel, near Cambridge railway station, at about 2.40pm on Saturday 24 October when his brown leather bag was taken from outside the venue.

Inside were his props – the tools of his trade – plus what he called “prized possessions” from big performances, including last year’s World Championship of Magic. And anything a thief might actually want? By his own account: some cufflinks, a Zippo lighter and “maybe some 10 pence pieces”.

Le Mottee reported the theft to police, spent an hour sifting through nearby bins and has since scoured local hedges. So far, the bag has stubbornly refused to reappear in a puff of smoke.

“I’ve got clients who are looking forward to seeing me and I have no props at the moment,” he told BBC Radio Cambridgeshire. Fellow magicians have rallied round with offers to lend him kit because, as they say in the trade, the show must go on.

Cambridgeshire Police confirmed it had received a report of theft. The suspect is described as wearing blue jeans, a black hoodie and a pink and cream scarf, and carrying a backpack.

Le Mottee was named Close-up Magician of the Year by The Magic Circle in 2017. If you spot a bag that looks suspiciously full of playing cards, Cambridgeshire Police would like a word.

Source: BBC News

Doing the laundry is usually the least eventful hour of anyone’s week. Not at The Wishy Washy Laundry in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

Security cameras at the launderette on South Main Street caught a deer charging across the street and through the car park, where it ran straight into a woman who had just left with her washing. According to WGHP, she and her laundry basket went over.

Illustration.

The deer did not stop to apologise. It leapt through the launderette’s front window, glass and all, and ran around inside while customers scrambled out of the way, some climbing onto desks. It then climbed up onto the washing machines and dryers, before finding its way back out through the broken window and disappearing across the car park.

Illustration. (Spot Gaz, our gorilla, hiding somewhere in this one.)

“Like a deer coming through the business, what in the world?” owner Corey Pendergrass told WXII. “Who has to deal with this?” He called it a “one in a million chance”.

The good news: no one was seriously hurt, and a local glazier had the window fixed within a couple of hours. The launderette also felt the need to add, for doubters online: “this is 100% legit. No AI.”

Reported by WXII 12 News, with details from WBTV, WGHP FOX8 and UPI.

Source: WXII 12 News

Most of us lock our cars to keep things out. In Juneau, Alaska, one family has learned the hard way that it works the other way round too.

At around 12.30am on Monday, a black bear climbed into the family’s unlocked Subaru – and the door shut behind it. A neighbour heard the car horn going off, looked out and saw the bear sitting on it, then called 911.

Police woke the family up to get the keys, but by then the bear had ripped out the wiring and the doors wouldn’t unlock. So officers did the only sensible thing: they tied a rope to the door and pulled it open from a distance. “He actually puts his paw on the window at one point before the officer opens the door,” said Angela Harkins.

AI illustration.

The bear was out within five to ten minutes and ran off unhurt. The car was not so lucky. Seats, back seats, door panels and plastic all torn apart, and even the metal bent. Owner Michael Wilson was generous about it: “I got to hand it to Subaru. They made a good car. It couldn’t get out.”

AI illustration.

The family say the bear got into three cars that night but only got locked in the last one, calling it “the Goldilocks situation”. Their insurance didn’t cover it. Wilson’s advice: “Lock your doors. Don’t leave any food, no candy.”

Reported by Alaska’s News Source; also covered by UPI and CNN.

Source: Alaska's News Source

Some ancient Roman technology – roads, aqueducts, central heating – we’ve rather got the hang of. Their party glassware, it turns out, took a bit longer.

The Lycurgus Cup, a 4th-century goblet in the British Museum, is jade green in ordinary light but glows ruby red when lit from behind. It has been called one of the seven glass wonders of the world, and for a very long time nobody could reliably make anything like it.

Now a team at the University of Sheffield, led by Dr Lisa Hollands and Prof Caroline Jackson, has recreated the effect. The secret is a dash of gold and silver nanoparticles suspended in the glass – which, to be clear, the Romans managed without microscopes, chemistry degrees or the word “nanoparticle”.

“It’s magic,” said Hollands, who admits the Romans would probably find her efforts hilarious: “If the Romans could have seen me experimenting, they’d probably laugh and ask: ‘Why does she not know how to make this?’”

UCL’s Ian Freestone reckons Roman glassmakers simply “hit the jackpot”, since the colour is fussy about exactly where the glass sits in the furnace.

Glass artist Elliot Walker has made a sculpture using the rediscovered recipe. It goes on show at Sheffield’s Millennium Gallery during the Festival of the Mind (6–15 November) before moving permanently to the Turner Museum of Glass. Bring a torch.

Source: The Guardian

Some getaways are smooth. This one, according to police in Nashua, New Hampshire, was not.

Shortly before 2am on 17 October, officers were called to HRA Market on South Main Street after a resident reported a man in dark clothing forcing his way in. When they arrived, police say they found him inside trying to get out through the broken glass door – and he was stuck.

AI illustration.

Plan B, police allege, was a small window. It did not work either. Plan C: run to the bathroom at the back and climb up into the drop ceiling to hide.

According to the police complaint, as reported by the New Hampshire Union Leader, officers “were able to directly observe” the suspect’s feet “puncture through the ceiling multiple times” as he tried to stay hidden. He was arrested.

AI illustration.

Police say the cash register was badly damaged, and $1 and $5 bills were found scattered around the store. When he was arrested he was allegedly carrying $153 in $1 and $5 bills.

A 47-year-old man has been charged with two counts of burglary, linked to this and a second break-in nearby that morning, plus criminal mischief and resisting arrest. He has pleaded not guilty to some charges and entered no plea on others. The allegations have not been proven in court.

Reported by Nashua Ink Link and the New Hampshire Union Leader.

Source: Nashua Ink Link

You line up the shot. Everyone’s smiling. The light is perfect. And then a great white shark launches itself out of the Pacific behind you.

That, more or less, is what happened to a group of friends posing for photos at Marina State Beach in California over the weekend. Videos circulating online show the shark breaching several feet clear of the water in the background – surely the most committed photobomb of the year.

California State Parks told the Guardian it had independently confirmed that a shark matching the characteristics of a great white breached off the shore near the beach at the same time as the footage. Shark notices went up, and officials were keen to stress that sharks are an important part of the coastal ecosystem and that run-ins with people are rare.

Great whites visit Monterey Bay seasonally, heading out towards waters near Hawaii before returning to California’s coast in late summer and early autumn to feed on fish, seals and other marine mammals. Sightings along parts of the west coast have increased in recent years as ocean conditions change.

For all the Jaws-fuelled reputation, the species is classed as vulnerable, with populations having fallen by more than 90% in some regions during the 20th century.

So: a rare sight, a vulnerable animal and a genuinely spectacular photo. Just not one you’d want to be standing any closer to.

Source: The Guardian

If you’d checked the rain radar in New South Wales any evening last month, you’d have reached for your brolly. You’d also have been wrong.

For weeks, weather radars across south-eastern Australia have lit up with what looks like widespread drizzle, like clockwork, just after sunset. On most nights the skies were clear, and it certainly hadn’t rained for a month straight.

The equipment isn’t broken, and – the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s meteorologist felt it necessary to clarify – it’s “not a giant UFO” either. It’s millions of bogong moths migrating south to the Australian Alps for summer. Radars bounce radio waves off anything in the sky, and a big enough swarm of moths looks remarkably like light rain.

“Large numbers of insects can look like very light widespread rain, particularly near sunrise and sunset,” the Bureau of Meteorology explained. The phenomenon has now spread into Victoria too.

Proper forecasts are fine, since they rely on models, ground observations and satellites. But some weather apps working from raw radar data may have been sending false rain alerts.

It isn’t the moths’ first offence. At the 2000 Sydney Olympics, forecasters panicked when radar showed rain heading for the closing ceremony – until a large moth landed on the opera singer Yvonne Kenny live on television. Mystery solved, dignity lost.

Source: ABC News (Australia)