Just after the Aug. 10 travel restrictions were imposed, British Airways refused to allow disabled New Zealand runner Kate Horan—on her way to the paralympic world championships in the Netherlands—to carry on her prosthetic leg, as she had long been allowed to do. Her checked-baggage leg was then lost in the chaos at Heathrow airport, and the prosthetic’s manufacturer scrambled to make Horan a new one. The leg was found a week later, and at press time, Horan had won at least one medal. Oh, and the Transportation Security Administration’s ban on carry-on liquids, gels and ointments apparently does not apply to small quantities of “personal lubricants,” such as sex aid gels.
LEAVE NO ANIMAL UNEATEN
Colombia’s exports of “hormiga culona” (“big-butt queen ants”) are down this year due to a harsh winter and aggressive lizards and birds, creating steep prices for chocolate-dipped ants in London and ant-based sauces and spreads at home, according to an August Associated Press dispatch. And a July Reuters story on the Explorers Club in New York City called it virtually the only place where gourmets can enjoy such delicacies as scorpion, cricket, tarantula and maggot, and pigeon pate, as well as odd parts of common livestock. Worms are also prized if they’ve been “evacuated” on oatmeal for a few days before serving.
PROBLEM SOLVED
Darrell Rodgers, 40, was treated at Bloomington (Ind.) Hospital in August after shooting himself in the left knee because he felt he had to try something to end the pain there—pain possibly from having shot himself in that knee 10 years earlier. And electrician Paul Trotman, 51, was arrested in Clay County, Fla., in August after allegedly rigging an electrical device to shock a 3 1/2-year-old boy who lived with Trotman and his wife, after Trotman got fed up that the boy was constantly urinating on electrical outlets just to see sparks fly.
CREME DE LA WEIRD
A recent documentary produced for Australia’s Channel 4 (and described in a July story in Sydney’s Daily Telegraph) caught up with a Ukrainian woman, now 23, who had been forgotten by her mother and father and raised by dogs until age 8. Oxana Malaya—one of about 100 known feral children—has the tested mental age of 6, stilted speech and an uncoordinated gait, and still buries any gifts she receives and runs into the woods when she is upset. On camera, Malaya barked, ran on all fours, panted with her tongue out and dried herself off by shaking.
LEAST COMPETENT PERSON
Kaleb E. Spangler, 21, was badly hurt by fireworks in August when, according to his girlfriend, he decided to duct-tape a large “mortar-style” explosive onto a football helmet, put it on and light it, while riding with friends in a car. According to a story in the Herald-Times of Bloomington, Ind., alcohol was involved in Spangler’s decision.
SMOKIN’ RELIGION
Joseph Butts is in jail in Franklin County, Mo., the result of being caught with 338 pounds of marijuana in a traffic stop, but according to an August St. Louis Post-Dispatch report, he told the arresting officer that hassling him would be a “hate crime” because he was a courier transporting religious instruments between monasteries of the Church of Cognizance, which uses marijuana as a sacrament. MTW
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