Walt and Kathy Viggiano of Wichita, Kan., convinced Judge James Burgess to return their four children from foster care in 1999, following their removal because of excessive unsanitariness of the family's mobile home. Unlike in many such cases, Judge Burgess realized, the Viggianos loved their kids, had not abused them and had no alcohol or drug problems. Also, according to police who made the initial investigation, Walt and the kids seemed to have warm conversations, even though entirely in Klingon (from "Star Trek").

In 1996, Cambridge (England) University researcher Fiona Hunter, who studied penguins' mating habits for five years, reported that some females apparently allow male strangers to mate with them in exchange for a few nest-building stones, thus providing what Hunter believes is the first observed animal prostitution. According to Dr. Hunter, all activity was done behind the backs of the females' regular mates, and in a few instances, after the sex act, johns gave the females additional stones as sort of a tip.

-- In 1999, a federal judge in Syracuse, N.Y., rejected another in a series of lawsuits by Donald Drusky of East McKeesport, Pa., in his 30-year battle against USX Corp. for ruining his life by firing him in 1968. Furthermore, Drusky sued "God ... the sovereign ruler of the universe" for taking "no corrective action" against any of Drusky's enemies and demanded that God compensate him with professional guitar-playing skills and the resurrection of his mother.

-- The March 1998 trial in the lawsuit by Lesli Szabo (seeking the equivalent of almost US$2 million against a Hamilton, Ontario, hospital) started with her testimony that she deserved money because her childbirth had not been pain-free. Physicians said that painless childbirth could not be achieved without the anesthesia's endangering the child, but Szabo said she expected to be comfortable enough to be able to read or knit while the child was being delivered. She admitted to previous run-ins with physicians, explaining, "When I'm in pain, the (words) that come out of my mouth would curl your hair." (After five days of trial, the parties reached an undisclosed settlement.)

-- If the Dogs Don't Growl, the Neighbors Can't Howl: In West Hartford, Conn., three years after O.J. Simpson was acquitted, renowned lawyer Johnnie Cochran defended two rottweilers accused of barking too much, but he lost the case. Cochran represented his friend Flora Allen (mother of basketball player and actor Ray Allen), whose dogs were the subject of numerous barking complaints, but he failed to persuade a judge to lift a 9 p.m. outdoor curfew on the dogs.

-- A jury in Birmingham, Ala., ruled in favor of Barbara Carlisle and her parents in their 1999 lawsuit against two companies that had overcharged them by $1,224 to install two satellite dishes. The jury awarded the plaintiffs a total of $581 million in damages.

-- Letter carrier Martha Cherry, 49, was fired by the Postal Service in White Plains, N.Y., in 1997 after 18 years of apparently walking her rounds too slowly. Wrote a supervisor, of the 5-foot-4 Cherry: "At each stop, the heal of your leading foot did not pass the toe of the trailing foot by more than one inch. As a result, you required 13 minutes longer than your demonstrated ability to deliver the mail to this section of your route."

-- Postal worker Douglas C. Yee, 50, was indicted in 1996 in San Mateo, Calif., for pulling off bulk-mail scams that grossed him $800,000. Found in Yee's garbage were notes he had written to God expressing gratitude for His continued help in evading police. Read one: "Lord, I am having a difficult time myself seeing you as a God who hides crime, yet your Word says that it's your privilege (or glory) to do just that."

Fort Smith, Ark., police arrested James Newsome, 37, in 1999 and charged him with taking money at gunpoint from the Gas Well convenience store. The robber's face was easily identified from the surveillance tape, and the coat worn by the robber was found in Newsome's car. Also, Newsome's wife said the family car had a radiator leak, and a puddle of antifreeze was found beside the store where the robber parked. And, also, the robber wore a hard hat with "James Newsome" on the front.

-- Electrical contractor Akira Hareruya, 36, whose company went bankrupt, had taken to working the streets of Tokyo in 1999, trying to earn back the money by inviting passersby to put on boxing gloves and take swings at him for the equivalent of about US$9 a minute. He promised not to hit back, but only to try to evade the punches, and suggested that his customers further relieve their stress by yelling at him as they swing. He told the Los Angeles Times that he averaged the equivalent of about US$200 a night.

-- Purdy, Mo., banker Glen Garrett, 66, got in trouble in the 1990s and by 1998, according to a Springfield (Mo.) Business Journal report, had spent about $1 million in legal fees to fight federal regulators who had fined him because he wouldn't stop doing business as his father had taught him, that is, by handshake, rather than by the required, formal paperwork. In one paperless deal, Garrett hired himself to construct a bank building, but that upset the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. because there were no competitive bids, even though an independent appraiser later said that Garrett built the bank for about $300,000 less than the market price.

In 1998, Josh Hempel, then 16, in Calgary, Alberta, became the then-latest person to be hit by lightning shortly after ending an argument by inviting God to strike him with lightning if he was wrong. (The subject of this argument was whether God exists.) He was hospitalized but recovered. And at the Bathgate Golf Club in West Lothian, Scotland, two months before that, Father Alex Davie was playing in the Clergy Golfing Society tournament when lightning struck the tip of his umbrella and then, when he sought refuge under a tree, struck that, too. He suffered a sore arm but continued his round.

On the morning of Nov. 11, 1997, two best friends, ages 27 and 41, residents of Whitney, Texas, about 25 miles north of Waco, did what they often enthusiastically did when they encountered each other on the empty farm roads: They drove their pickups directly at each other in a game of chicken. That morning, they collided at about 60 miles an hour. The younger man was saved by his seatbelt; the older man, unbelted, died at the scene.

(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa FL 33679 or WeirdNews@earthlink.net or go to www.NewsoftheWeird.com.)

Two child prodigies from India made the news in June. A boy named Bharanidharan, 13, backed by several adult disciples, declared himself a Hindu holy man and founded a monastery in Salem in Tamil Nadu state, until his parents had him abducted and brought back home. (A judge released the boy back to his ashram and will later conduct a hearing on his rights.) And Akrit Jaswal, 11, acclaimed as a genius by Indian and international organizations, recently spent two months at the Tata Cancer Institute in Mumbai, working with researchers on cancer and AIDS, and at the recommendation of doctors, Akrit's parents sold most of their belongings to finance a research lab for him in New Delhi.

Kenny Borger survived a one-car crash in upstate New York on May 1, but his passenger was killed, and Borger decided to surreptitiously bring the body home to Hamilton, N.J., in the damaged car and then figure out what to do next. What he decided on was to commandeer a backhoe one night from a previous employer, scoop up the body, drive it about five miles out of town, dig a 13-foot-deep hole with the backhoe, and bury the body. He was later arrested and charged with tampering with evidence. Said Mercer County prosecutor Joseph Bocchini Jr., describing Borger's plan, "I couldn't make this stuff up."

-- Clermont, Fla., police 911 dispatcher Lorraine Stanton was fired in May as the result of bad performance reviews, not even counting an incident on her last weekend. A woman called to report a street gathering that included a man wanted by police, but according to the 911 tape, Stanton was not helpful: "OK, that person would have to come to the police station, and we would have to check. When they come in, they'd have to bring ID." When the caller asked why a wanted man might voluntarily turn himself in, Stanton replied, "Ma'am, that's the only way we can check."

-- The mother of accused serial killer Maury Travis filed a lawsuit against the prison in May for her son's alleged suicide, claiming among other things that the architects who designed the cellblock made it unusually difficult for guards to peek in on inmates on a "suicide watch," such as her son. However, Travis' "suicide" actually revealed a remarkably focused man: According to news reports, Travis is said to have hanged himself with a bedsheet, but with a pillowcase over his head, toilet paper in his nostrils, a washcloth in his mouth, and his hands tied behind him.

-- Officials investigating an explosion inside Villa Hermosa prison in Cali, Colombia, in May (which killed three inmates and wounded 15) concluded, using the process of elimination, that the only way the grenade could have gotten into the facility was to have been smuggled in by a certain, unnamed female visitor earlier that day. According to a Reuters News Service dispatch, authorities concluded that she must have hidden the grenade in a body cavity because that's the only place guards are not allowed to search.

-- In May, the Columbus (Ohio) City Council approved a building permit for the Faith Christian Center ("On Fire for God") to construct a 52,000-square-foot commercial complex centered on an indoor skateboard park, and including a restaurant, arcade and pro shop, named Godz Xtreme Power Park.

-- A March Wall Street Journal story reported on the growing number of churches that have introduced services aimed at improving the lives, and chances for salvation, of parishioners' pets (at least in part under the belief that some former worshipers would return to church if it were more "relevant," such as by offering prayers for protection from fleas). In some places, clergy accompany parishioners to pet euthanizations, or hold "bark mitzvahs," or dispense Holy Communion to dogs.

-- In April, Rocky Sanchez, 36, a former civic award-winner in El Monte, Calif., was sentenced to 1,002 years in prison on 41 felony counts, including the rape and torture of his wife, with the long sentence reflecting the fact that any one of the counts was Sanchez's sentence-enhancing "third strike." Under California law, however, if his wife had died during the attack, Sanchez might have received only about 50 years. (That's because he would be subject instead to the capital murder statute and might have gotten life without parole, but then again, he might have gotten the death penalty.)

-- In Denver in May, a 13-year-old girl, who was sometimes taunted by classmates because she has a small right arm and leg from cerebral palsy, was threatened with a knife and had her hair set on fire by a seventh-grade boy, but after the incident was reported, officials at Martin Luther King Middle School sent her home for the rest of the school year (for her protection, they said) while the boy remained in class. (The school's interim principal admitted several days later that her staff had botched the investigation.)

China Daily reported in May that businessman Hu Xilm, who claims that a housefly in the food 10 years ago ruined a big business deal for him, has since spent thousands of dollars on an obsession to eliminate as many flies as he can; with help from a team of volunteers he recruited, he claims to have killed 8 million. And in May, white supremacist Ms. Karleana Zuber was arrested in Kootenai County, Idaho, and charged with spitting in a state trooper's face; Zuber was isolated from the other inmates for her protection because in her not-too-distant past, before surgery, she was a male white supremacist.

Serena Prasad, 22, got into a fight with her boyfriend in Turlock, Calif., on May 2 and allegedly stabbed him several times in the chest, but seeing that he was injured, put him into her car and headed for the hospital. According to a police account, while she was stopped en route at a traffic light, she realized that her boyfriend had not had enough yet, and she walked around to the passenger side, stabbed him again in the shoulder with a steak knife, and kicked him in the head, but police happened by, and she was arrested on a charge of attempted murder.

In June, the Oklahoma attorney general petitioned the state Supreme Court to remove District Judge Donald D. Thompson of Sapulpa based on recurring complaints that he used, during trials and other proceedings, under his robe, a pump device for enhancing masturbation, in view of court personnel, who complained of the "whooshing" noise the gadget made. And in St. Paul, Minn., a 43-year-old woman was arrested for an incident in which she bit her new boyfriend's tongue too hard during a kiss, slicing off a portion and, police believe, inadvertently swallowing it. (She told police she has had issues with men in the past and might have panicked.)

(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa FL 33679 or WeirdNews@earthlink.net or go to www.NewsoftheWeird.com.)

A Palm Beach Post writer, making the point that America's obesity problem is not limited to humans, reported from the Boca Greens Animal Hospital (Boca Raton, Fla.) in June that "Pumpkin," a 12-pound Chihuahua, was up and moving well after her recent liposuction surgery. However, the 12 ounces of fat she lost still left her among South Florida's overweight pets, said to be two-thirds of their population. As Pumpkin's owner was reminded, surgery is not to be a substitute for sensible exercise and a modest number of treats.

(1) Police in Fort Myers, Fla., arrested Carlos Chereza, 17, in April and charged him with hiring a hit man to kill his mother and to make it look like a burglary; as is often the case, the "hit man" was actually an undercover detective, who by the way said Chereza's main concern was to pull off the job without damaging the family's TV set. (2) In March, Thailand's agriculture minister criticized health officials' proposal to embed microchips in the nation's 200,000 fighting roosters, to help deal with the avian flu scare sweeping Asia; the minister's main concern was that the implants would hamper the cocks' aggressiveness.

-- Recently, Britain's BBC televised an educational program in which scientist Mike Leahy and pal Zeron Gibson undertook certain activities in the weeks leading up to the program, and then, live on April 15, the men's sperm was shown, by microscope, in a "race" inside tiny glass tubes, in an experiment to gauge the effects of different lifestyle choices on sperm motility. Gibson's won.

-- In March, U.S. Rep. Major Jones of Brooklyn, N.Y., proudly claimed authorship of a controversial rap-music play being seriously considered for staging in New York City. Rep. Jones' "The Viagra Monologues" champions male sexuality, with lines like (according to a New York Post story), "Monogamy is for chumps" and "Boyhood self-esteem dies / Gawking at the other guy's size / What deal with the angels / Awarded him a better tubular prize."

-- South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, intending to score some publicity in his battle against what he believes is irresponsible spending by the state legislature, held two small pigs in his arms at a photo opportunity outside the House chamber in May, telling reporters that one was named "pork" and the other "barrel." Before the event ended, both pigs had soiled the governor's suit jacket and the elegant carpet at the State House, forcing Sanford's press secretary and speechwriter to pull quick duty with cleanser and paper towels.

-- Breakaway Mormon polygamist John Daniel Kingston, testifying in May at his child-abuse trial in Salt Lake City (he had been charged with threatening to beat two teenage daughters if they got their ears pierced), strongly asserted his devotion as a parent, despite having to keep up with numerous children from his reported 14 wives. However, when asked to name the 13 children he had with one of the wives, he struggled through nine names before giving up.

-- In April, the Nebraska state auditor discovered thousands of dollars missing from the state's million-dollar smoking-cessation program and only then realized that the man running the program since 2001, Rock Mueller, had been hired while still on work release from prison on a theft conviction. And in March, the Rhode Island House speaker appointed to the prestigious budget-writing committee Rep. Joseph L. Faria, who was well-known to have been struggling for a decade with personal money issues that had caused him to be sued, to have liens placed on his property, and to have been investigated by the state police.

-- (1) Pedestrian James W. Dudley, 61, was hospitalized in May after being hit by a car in Glen Burnie, Md.; moments before, he had been discussing with another person at a bus stop the relative probability of being hit by a car vs. being the victim of a theft. (2) And in May at a middle school honors dance in Mount Vernon, Wash. (with invitees chosen exclusively on the basis of high academic and behavioral standards), a 12-year-old girl and her 14-year-old classmate were taken into custody for beating another girl unconscious.

Adding to the list of stories that were formerly weird but which now occur with such frequency that they must be retired from circulation: (69) The civic-minded drunk who recognizes the danger in trying to drive home but who instead puts his adolescent child behind the wheel, or, as Michael Johnston did in Peachtree City, Ga., in June, got a blind friend to drive (supposedly "guided" by Johnston's instructions). (70) And the construction worker who is accidentally shot in the head with a nail gun, but who survives just fine (and winds up with a souvenir X-ray, which also appears in newspapers around the world), as happened to Isidro Mejia in Los Angeles in May.

Salem, Mass., police Sgt. David Connelly was finally arrested in January after an alleged two-year vandalism spree; according to police in nearby Lynnfield, Connelly had been angry at a 2001 court decision against him by Judge Howard Whitehead, who lives a few blocks away, and at least 90 times in two years had driven by Whitehead's house and tossed empty beer cans into the yard. And in St. Petersburg, Fla., in March, the U.S. ambassador to Italy, Melvin Sembler, who for 17 years ran an aggressive drug treatment program called Straight, filed a lawsuit against disgruntled Straight ex-client Richard Bradbury, who allegedly has harassed Sembler since 1987, including rummaging through his garbage (once finding Sembler's penile pump and advertising it on eBay).

In May, the principal of Lincoln Multicultural Middle School in Washington, D.C., already under investigation for some missing school student activities money, was fired after trying to sell two school buses to someone in Panama. And in May, C&F Construction Inc., which had been suspended from D.C. government contracts earlier this year because its president had been convicted of defrauding the government on road-paving materials, was abruptly reinstated and in May awarded a $3.1 million road repair contract.

(1) Police Sgt. Randall C. Hoover of Muhlenberg Township, Pa., filed a federal lawsuit in April accusing the police department and the police union of civil rights violations because members allegedly teased him for his pituitary-gland tumor that caused him to grow lactating breasts. (2) Nurse Jackie Tvedt held on to her state license even though she was fired in January from a nursing home in Newton, Iowa, for allegedly providing a reduced level of care to those patients whom God had told her that He would take care of.

(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa FL 33679 or WeirdNews@earthlink.net or go to www.NewsoftheWeird.com.)