PLUMY GIVEAWAY: A man was charged on Tuesday with smuggling songbirds into the United States by hiding more than a dozen of them in an elaborate, custom-tailored pair of leggings during a flight from Vietnam to Los Angeles.
Sony Dong (46) was arrested at Los Angeles International Airport in March after an inspector spotted bird feathers and droppings on his socks and tail feathers peeking out from under his pants, prosecutors said.
“He had fashioned these special cloth devices to hold the birds,” said US attorney spokesman Thom Mrozek. “They were secured by cloth wrappings and attached to his calves with buttons.” —— MSNBC.
GRIM REAPER: A Florida woman has been indicted for keeping her dead mother’s body in a bedroom for six years while collecting more than US$200 000 in pension benefits, US prosecutors said.Penelope Sharon Jordan of Sebastian, Florida, was charged by a federal grand jury last week with social security fraud and theft, the US Attorney’s Office in Miami said.Police found the decaying body of her mother, Timmie Jordan, on a bed in a spare bedroom at the mother’s home in late March, when they were called to investigate a report of nuisance cats.Penelope Jordan told police her mother had died in 2003. —— Reuters.
NO SNACK : A New York man regretted changing his side order from chips to vegetables after finding a snake’s head in his broccoli.Jack Pendleton first thought the thumb-sized object was a mushroom, until he turned it over, reports the Albany Times Union.“I see this grey-green patch,” he said. “I could see these black, rotted eye sockets on the top. I stopped eating. I told my girlfriend, ‘I think this is a head’.” –Â Ananova.TRASHED: Austrian authorities sent a debt collector to a man’s house after he underpaid his trash collection bill by 36 euro cents, about US50 cents, a newspaper said.The man, from a village in Lower Austria province, told Kronen Zeitung that he had accidentally overlooked the 36 cents after the decimal place on his bill for 236, 36 euros ($315).The slip-up set the bureaucratic ball rolling, said a spokeswoman from the court which chased the debt. —— Reuters.
HALF-NAKED PUFFER: Authorities said a woman wasn’t wearing any clothes when she knocked on a stranger’s door in the middle of the night to ask for cigarettes. The Pinellas County sheriff’s office reported that the woman (52) went to the stranger’s home early Friday morning. Deputies found her a short time later walking through a mobile home park wearing only boxer shorts.The woman was charged with disorderly conduct and was taken to jail but later released on her own recognisance. —— MSNBC.
GRISLY FIND: A rescue team which failed to find a missing visitor at a tourist hotspot in northern China got a nasty surprise when it stumbled upon seven corpses instead.The team had been scouring the peaks around Taishan Mountain in Shandong province for the Beijing tourist who vanished on April 28, the Qilu Evening Post said.“We accidentally found seven corpses during our search over the past few days,” the newspaper quoted one of the rescuers. —— Reuters.
BITTEN: A Taiwanese man became a sitting target for a snake, which bit his penis as he sat on the toilet at his rural home, local media reported.“When he looked down, he saw the big snake.” said the China times.—— Reuters.
