-- According to a Chicago Tribune dispatch from Rome, it is a well-known August ritual that animal shelters are flooded with abandoned dogs and cats, exactly coinciding with the peak time for Italian vacation departures. What's worse, wrote the Tribune, citing press reports in Rome, is the uptick in the number of disabled parents who are dropped off at hospital emergency rooms by the same departing vacationers.

In June, according to police, former master bank robber Stephen Reid, 49, who had gone straight since 1987 (having written a best-selling novel and married an acclaimed poet), unexpectedly returned to his craft by robbing a Royal Bank branch in Victoria, British Columbia; however, he and his partner were arrested after a brief chase and shootout. And in April, Forrest Silva Tucker, 78, who was so brilliant that he once escaped from California's San Quentin Prison on a jerry-built river float, was arrested and charged with robbing a Republic Security Bank in Jupiter, Fla.; however, his car crashed into a tree after a brief chase.

-- Recent Rages: Donovan Moore, 43, was cited for disorderly conduct in April in Janesville, Wis., after he impatiently cut into a line of cars in a funeral procession and then made obscene gestures at the mourners. And from the Barberton (Ohio) Herald police blotter, May 27: "A 33-year-old West Virginia man drove his vehicle into a 30-year-old Barberton woman's fence, then tore her gate off its hinges. He had driven to town to try to have sex with her, but she refused, so he drove back to West Virginia."

-- Victoria Smith, 58, was arrested in March after pulling a gun on Pastor Chester Miller of the Saddle (Ark.) Baptist Church during the closing prayer because he hadn't preached from Revelations, which was important to Smith for her feud with another church member. And Wesley Free, 44, was arrested in February after firing on the congregation at the Church of the First Born in Oklahoma City, allegedly because the pastor wouldn't remove his name from the membership rolls.

-- In July, four men won $7,500 each from the city of Livermore, Calif., to settle a lawsuit over alleged police misconduct during a sting operation at the Not Too Naughty adult bookstore. According to the men's lawyer, Bruce Nickerson, police violated the privacy of his clients by spying on them while they were masturbating inside a booth in a video arcade.

-- Last year, Susan Bauer claimed she couldn't cut her grass (and thus violated an ordinance of DeForest, Wis.) because she was protecting exotic prairie plants. However, when that excuse was rejected, she filed a lawsuit in July 1999 claiming that she has a bad back and that making her mow her lawn violates the Americans With Disabilities Act.

-- In June, state regulators threatened to pull the license of Monique Dostie's home for retarded people in Lewiston, Maine, over her prohibition on residents' sexual activity and sexual materials. Dostie refused, citing her Catholic beliefs, her residents' limited abilities, and the absence of complaints from their families. The state stood firm on the sexual rights of the retarded, and in August, Dostie shut down her home and left the state.

-- In July, the Arkansas Supreme Court tossed out the DUI conviction of Michael Norris because police had administered a field sobriety test in his bedroom. Police had gone to his home on a tip just after Norris had arrived somewhat inebriated and were let into the house by Norris' mother-in-law. The court ruled that warrantless searches for DUI offenses were illegal and that the mother-in-law couldn't legally give permission for anyone to enter Norris' bedroom.

Introducing a new category, to acknowledge that if people didn't drink, there wouldn't be enough News of the Weird for a weekly column: In a June issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, two doctors affirmed that decapitated rattlesnake heads are still capable of injecting venom and that research shows that "young men," "particularly while intoxicated," disproportionately receive such bites by "voluntarily" engaging the snake's head.

In May, officials at Langara College in Vancouver, British Columbia, canceled a course on shamanism after learning that instructor Lennart Aastrup had convinced his 23 students to take off their clothes in class so they could better identify their bodies' energy patterns. Two weeks earlier, Los Angeles police had arrested elementary school teacher Wendell Smith, 46, after his fourth-grade students turned him in for stripping during class and making obscene gestures.

Adding to the list of stories that were formerly weird but which now occur with such frequency that they must be retired from circulation: (35) The dog that steps on his master's gun, on the trigger, causing the gun to fire and hit the master, sometimes fatally, as happened to a 51-year-old man in the town of Bad Urach, Germany, in August. And (36) the pack of animals that breaks into a liquor storage area, drinks up, and then goes on a drunken rampage, as happened in March and April with rats (moonshine at a police station) and monkeys (liquor samples in a government testing lab) in New Delhi, India. (Authorities could tell the rats were drunk because they were attacking cats.)

Criminals Imitate the 3 Stooges: Donnell Taylor, 35, was arrested in June and charged with burglary of a Pasadena, Calif., nursing home; Taylor had opened a sliding glass door for a quick getaway, but an employee later closed it, and Taylor's subsequent crash through the door left a blood trail, which police followed to make the arrest. And a man in a ski mask and with gun drawn rushed the front door of the formerly 24-hour (but now 6 to 11) E-Z Serve store near Tallahassee, Fla., in July at 11:15 p.m.; the man slammed into the locked door, stunning himself and knocking two packets of marijuana out of his pocket before he escaped.

A 210-pound, 30-year-old honeycomb was removed from inside the walls of a home (Tucson, Ariz.). A 14-year-old disclosed he is the father of a pregnant 12-year-old girl's child (she was his 11th sex partner) and told reporters, "I think I will make a good dad" (South Yorkshire, England). Volunteer firefighters doused a blaze inside their station that did $50,000 damage to a fire truck (Chattanooga, Tenn.). Air New Zealand agreed to offer compensation to a business-class traveler from Los Angeles who looked down to find a rat nibbling at her knee. A burglar lowered himself through a restaurant's grease vent, then changed his mind but couldn't get back out because it was too slippery, and had to wait 11 hours to be rescued (Snellville, Ga.).

(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa, Fla. 33679, or Weird@compuserve.com.)

-- Among the men's fashions introduced in Paris in July were a crocheted face mask (reminiscent of Hannibal Lecter) and a flower-print jacket and matching headscarf, from Belgian designer Walter Van Bierendonck; a white full skirt for men to wear over blue jeans, from Dutch designer Dries Van Noten; and, also to be worn with blue jeans and a white shirt: a formal black dorsal wing extending five feet out on each side (by a designer unidentified in an Associated Press dispatch).

Debtors Norman and Melissa Cameron said in court documents that God told them they didn't have to pay their mortgage (Hartford, Conn., August). Dean William Trammel, 22, charged with assaulting a flight attendant, said in court that God told him he didn't have to remain seated during the landing (Baltimore, January). Donald R. Delgade, 37, arrested for driving through the front door of the James R. Thompson Center in Chicago, said God told him to (June). Priscilla Lee Jansma, 44, arrested for killing her husband, told police, "Jesus told me it was OK to do it" (Aurora, Colo., June).

-- Driver Lamarn Williams, 27, and his three passengers were arrested in August near Washington, Pa., by a state trooper who had intended only to warn Williams for driving too fast. However, when the trooper asked the obligatory question about whether the car contained any guns or drugs, passenger Marlon Martez Lee's eyes rolled back in his head, and he fainted. The trooper called for drug-sniffing dogs, and about 10 kg of cocaine (value: $1 million) was found in the trunk.

-- The "ugly robber" plaguing the Phoenix area was arrested in July in Peoria, Ariz. Karen Marie Tribby, 33, reportedly confessed to 12 robberies in which police bulletins afterward in each case described the robber as a "very ugly woman." A police spokesman justified that description by pointing out that "every victim who has seen her" has described her as "very ugly."

-- From the Police Blotter column of the State Journal-Register, Springfield, Ill., July 29: A 41-year-old man reported that another man who lives at the same residence on East Adams Street may have stolen his glass eye. Both men have glass eyes, but the alleged victim said his was missing from his pocket but that another one was left in its place. The victim admitted he "did not see the exchange."

-- Ex-Marine Stanley Heiserman, 41, pleaded guilty in Allentown, Pa., in May to six convenience-store robberies, four of which he pulled off while naked. Heiserman told police that during a previous stint at robbery, he had been identified by his clothing and was determined not to let that happen again.

-- Milestone in Ambisexual Achievement: Patricia McGrath, 65, was arrested in Philadelphia in July and charged with robbing the First Federal Bank and was suspected in at least five other bank robberies. According to police, McGrath was dressed as a man during the job but fled the scene in women's clothing. During a strip search at the police station, McGrath was revealed to possess physical characteristics of both sexes and was classified as male, though he insisted on being called Patricia and confined in the women's section. On the other hand, said the arresting detective, "I definitely have to commend his professionalism. He's pretty good at (bank robbery)."

-- The United States and Canada recently squared off aggressively over a dispute about rights to the popular walleye fish that roam rivers and lakes near the Manitoba-Minnesota border. Canada bars U.S. anglers from its side of the lakes unless they stay at Canadian resorts; President Clinton says that policy violates the North American Free Trade Agreement. Minnesotans on a U.S. peninsula attached to Manitoba have threatened to secede and join Canada in order to get better access to walleyes, but in retaliation, Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura threatened to block the Canadian National railroad, whose track makes a short dip into Minnesota to get around one of the lakes.

-- In August, the Pikeville, Ky., City Commission granted permission to the McCoy family for a three-day reunion in June 2000, to which members of the Hatfield family have been invited for a McCoy-Hatfield softball game. (During the 1870s and 1880s, the two Appalachian families had one of the most notorious feuds in U.S. history, marked by 12 deaths.)

In April, Nashville, Tenn., police officer Clinton Lien was fired after superiors found out he was running an on-premises sex club for swingers in his spare time. And in May, officer Shayne Simmons was fired from the Carl Junction, Mo., police force after superiors found out he and his wife were the principals in a nude-dancing club just north of town.

Latest episode of someone stopping on the shoulder of the highway to urinate and then accidentally falling down an embankment to his death: Mr. Orlando Aros, 26, in June on Interstate 10 near Phoenix. And the latest instance of someone's emerging from a long coma by an inspirational presence in his hospital room: Tom Bendall, 19, Gloucester Royal Hospital, England, brought out of a six-month coma in April by his rugby team's holding its winning trophy in front of him.

People Who Should Have Kept a Lower Profile: Bobby Lee Allison, 26, who habitually carries a live snake around his neck, escaped from police in Tennessee (suspicion of DUI) but was arrested six hours later in Athens, Ala., when people reported seeing a guy with a snake around his neck (July). And Dorothy Joyner, 57, who evaded a warrant for burglary in Baltimore, was spotted by a police officer as she was being interviewed on TV in connection with her candidacy for mayor of Baltimore (subject of interview: crime-prevention).

A 30-year-old woman faced assault charges for kicking a catcalling man in the crotch (Toronto); cleaning ladies in Bologna, Italy, and at Dulles International Airport in Virginia cheerfully returned lost handbags containing $30,000 and $20,000 (in jewels and diamonds), respectively; a 26-year-old woman, headed home from a bar, fell off a rooftop and was wedged between two buildings for five hours (St. Catharines, Ontario); airport authorities confiscated a mysterious canister from a Yale researcher that turned out to be the semen of a 91-year-old professor, packed in dry ice and headed for an experiment in Wisconsin (New Haven, Conn.); two men stole a safe from a Swiss Chalet restaurant and spent a half-hour in the parking lot driving back and forth over it trying to get it open, but by then, police arrived (Ajax, Ontario).

(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa, Fla. 33679, or Weird@compuserve.com.)

-- Nuclear scientist Eric Voice, 73, told England's The Guardian in August that, as far as he knows, inhaling plutonium (as from the effects of a nuclear war) is not dangerous, citing his own successful test 18 months ago in which he sniffed some to try to allay the public's fears. Voice said nothing bad has happened to him so far and that, in fact, plutonium has never harmed anyone, except for those two bombs on Japan.

John Glover, 74, explaining why his car was in the middle of Deal Lake (N.J.), June: gas pedal got stuck. Billy W. Parkham, 68, on why his minivan smashed into a dress shop, Seekonk, Mass., August: gas pedal got stuck. Eleanor Soltis, 76, on why her car ran out of control in downtown Chicago, killing three people (and who agreed to pay a $1.5 million settlement in August): gas pedal got stuck. Marie Wyman, 87, on why her Buick crashed through the Lobster Trap & Steakhouse, Winslow, Maine, July: gas pedal got stuck.

-- Latest Holy Icons: Crocodiles, in a lake near Karachi, Pakistan, where thousands brought fresh-meat offerings in March to secure blessings for their babies; two frogs, joined in Hindu matrimony in Gauhati, India, in March to please rain gods and end a four-month drought; and six Franciscan priests, in remote Copacabana, Bolivia, who specialize in blessing motorists against drunk drivers, bad brakes and gasoline shortages, based on a mixture of Catholicism and Andean Indian beliefs.

-- According to a June Boston Globe dispatch, the kingdom of Bhutan, nestled between India and Tibet, recently legalized television-watching for its 700,000 people and began broadcasting the news and other programs. Before that, the country's few TV sets were used only to watch imported videos. (And, according to a June New Yorker travelogue, the Bhutanese landscape is dominated by penis art, which is a tribute to the legendary Drukpa Kunley and supposedly inspires fertility.)

-- Zimbabwe, which seemed on the verge of a breakthrough on rights for women just 15 years ago, was set back by an April unanimous decision of its Supreme Court that adult females are inherently inferior to males and have a status akin to that of teen-ager. The court cited "the nature of African society" as its basis.

-- An April Chronicle of Higher Education report reviewed research showing that, in more than a dozen South American societies plus others in New Guinea, Polynesia and India, all men who have sex with a pregnant woman are considered joint biological fathers. In this "partible paternity," the fetus is considered fertilized by repeated contributions of sperm, and at least one society, the Canela of Brazil, believe the baby will most resemble the man who contributes the most sperm at any time during the nine months.

-- In June, Panama City, Fla., elementary school teacher Wanda Nelson was reprimanded for confiscating a National Geographic magazine from a fourth-grade boy because it was "pornography" (i.e., drawings of naked humans in a story on evolution). And two Illinois researchers told a professional convention in May of their findings that telling a lie triggers a release of hormones to the nose, increasing its size.

-- Sound Like Monty Python Sketches: Clifford Shattuck, 66, owner of the Lighthouse Motel in Lincolnville, Maine, was barred by court order in May from having any contact with motel guests after one complaint too many of his harassing his customers, including once tossing rocks at a potential guest's car. And in July, the first European Swamp Soccer Championship (with 62 teams competing) was played in Hyrynsalmi, Finland, on a playing field purposely knee-deep in mud.

-- Deborah Lee Benagh, 44, filed a lawsuit in July in Denver against Six Flags Elitch Gardens amusement park for roller-coaster injuries. Because her shoulder harness did not hold her securely, she said, she repeatedly struck her head during the ride and later suffered headaches and nausea, as well as short- and long-term memory loss. The name of the ride is "Mind Eraser."

John Paul Roby, 56, was convicted in Toronto in May of 35 counts of sex crimes against minors, but not before a long and torturous trial in which a mountain of evidence (including testimony of 42 victim-witnesses) was produced against him, which in most cases he simply ignored while denying guilt. Highlights: a long colloquy in which he denied that a thoroughly authenticated photograph of him was really of him; a flat denial that "I never masturbate, period"; and repeated assertions that he could never have exposed himself in men's rooms (as witnesses claim) because his bladder control makes urination a rare event in his life.

Michael Robert Wyatt, now 38, made News of the Weird in 1990 when he pushed a woman to the ground in Little Rock, Ark., and began sucking her toes. After several such incidents, he was ordered into counseling and has since stayed out of the news, getting married and taking a job as a mechanic in West Plains, Mo. However, in August 1999, Wyatt was arrested in Fayetteville, Ark., for allegedly harassing several women by telling them they would really look hot if they amputated some of their toes. Some women in West Plains reported similar incidents.

In Calgary, Alberta, in June, David Thomas Poole, 49, was sent to jail for one year for perjury committed while challenging a routine traffic ticket. Poole submitted a photograph of the intersection at which he was ticketed showing there was no left-turn-only lane, as the ticket stated. Actually, the left-turn lane had been reconfigured recently, and though Poole swore that he had taken the photo at the time of the incident in January, the judge was struck by the scene's green grass and trees in full flower.

A 47-year-old burglar was crushed to death when a pickup truck fell off the jack as he was attempting to steal the wheels (London, Ohio). The police commissioner of Cambridge, Mass., admitted there was no scientific evidence to support the statement in his training manual that Mexican-Americans' diet makes them immune to pepper spray. An anesthesiologist was charged with stealing her surgeon-colleagues' credit cards from their lockers and buying designer clothes (San Francisco). Two police cars collided on the way to a doughnut shop (Panama City, Fla.; actually, the doughnut shop was a crime scene). Four veterinarians treated 10 dogs exhibiting "hallucinogenic stupor" and believe the cause is wild marijuana near the town's railroad tracks (Nelson, British Columbia).

(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa, Fla. 33679, or Weird@compuserve.com.)