Category: Truth that’s Stranger than Fiction

Rats and Cats Work to Sniff Out Mines
July 24, 2007

Bogota, Colombia (AP) — Who says Tom and Jerry can’t be friends? For the past year, a special Colombian police unit has been locking rats in cages with cats as part of a project to train the rodents to sniff out the more than 100,000 landmines planted mostly by leftist rebels across this conflict-wracked Andean country.

Bringing the rats face to face with an enemy allows them to stay more focused once they are released, veterinarian Luisa Mendez, who’s been working with the animals for two years, told The Associated Press on Tuesday.

“Here the cats play with the rats instead of attacking them,” Mendez said. “The cats wear shields on their nails so they can’t cause any injuries and as a result the rats feel comfortable playing around them.” Continue reading “Rodents to the Rescue”

Teacher Punishes Girls With Pond Squats
The Bellingham Herald
July 23, 2007

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (AP) — A Malaysian teacher has defended her move to punish 170 teenage girls by making them squat neck-deep in a fish pond, in a case that has sparked concerns about abuse in schools, a report said Monday.

Wee Yim Pien, an English teacher and warden at a boarding school in Sarawak state on Borneo island, told The Star newspaper that she sent the girls into the pond for 30 minutes on Wednesday after they repeatedly ignored her warnings to stop throwing sanitary pads into toilet bowls. Continue reading “What Would Monet Say?”

If he’d applied to an art school, he probably would have gotten a scholarship:

College Application Causes Bomb Scare
July 21, 2007

Charleston, Ill. (AP) — Here’s a tip for aspiring college students: Make sure your applications don’t warrant a visit from the bomb squad.

Emergency crews evacuated an Eastern Illinois University building Friday, after a campus postal carrier discovered a disheveled-looking package heading for the college’s admissions office.

“There was no return address, it was poorly written, poorly addressed to the university, there were misspellings,” school spokeswoman Vicki Woodard said Saturday. “There was some tape over it. Just the overall appearance was rather strange.”

The stuffed-and-stained envelope was strange enough that police alerted the bomb squad. Read the rest of the article here.

At last an alternative! www.finalcurtain.com. These were the words Joey Skaggs used to advertise his Final Curtain cemetery theme-park mall.

At the Final Curtain Web site, created by Skaggs and friends in 2000, clients were encouraged to develop site-specific works of passage — their own tombstones, mausoleums, caskets, or urns — as homage to their lives and their spirit. Dozens of media outlets covered the Final Curtain as though it was real. For a fun read, check out this salon.com article by Jeff Stark.

Now comes this latest chapter in the death arena:

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24-hour death-and-dying TV channel to debut in fall
July 15, 2007
London Sunday Telegraph

Berlin “” A round-the-clock television channel devoted exclusively to aging, death and dying will be started in Germany this fall.

Eos TV, which takes its name from the Greek goddess of the dawn, will feature documentaries about graveyards, televised obituaries, tips on finding a decent retirement home and even how to install in-house stair lifts.

The $14.2 million project was conceived by Wolf Tilmann Schneider, 51, a former television producer who has joined forces with Germany’s funeral association to start the 24-hour, seven-days-a-week, death-and-dying channel on cable television and the Internet. Continue reading “Death Got You Down?”

What not to do:

Man Calls 911 to Save Him From Police
July 16, 2007

Largo, Fla. (AP) — A 38-year-old man was arrested after he called 911 and told a dispatcher he was surrounded by police officers and needed help, authorities said.

Police officers met Dana Farrell Shelton after being called to investigate a disturbance at a bar on Sunday but had found no problems and told him to move along.

Shelton, who officers said appeared intoxicated, then called 911 to report he was “surrounded by Largo police,” according to an arrest affidavit. Continue reading “Man Calls 911 to Save Him From Police”