The beauty pageant each April at the Rattlesnake Roundup in Sweetwater, Texas, requires traditional skills like interview poise, evening-gown fashion and talent, but also some ability and inclination to milk and skin rattlers. High school senior Kyndra Vaught won this year's Miss Snake Charmer, wearing jeweled boots one night for her country-western ballad, then Kevlar boots and camouflage chaps the next as she took on dozens of rattlers in the wooden snake pit. Vaught expertly held up one serpent, offered its tail-end rattles for a baby to touch, then helped hold, measure, milk and skin a buzzing, slithery serpent. A Los Angeles Times dispatch noted that Vaught hoped to be on her way soon to the Berklee College of Music in Boston. [Los Angeles Times, 4-12-2013]

-- That there are flea "circuses" is bizarre enough, but in March a cold spell in Germany wiped out an entire troupe of "performing" fleas, requiring the flea whisperer to secure replacements (because, of course, the show must go on). Trainer Robert Birk reached out to a university near Mechernich-Kommern for 50 substitutes, which he apparently worked into the act over one weekend. (Fleas, with or without training, can pull up to 160,000 times their own weight and leap to 100 times their own height.) [The Independent (London), 3-31-2013]

-- The owner of a restaurant in southern Sweden told authorities in March that the former owner had assured him that "everything had been approved," apparently including the appliance the restaurant used for mixing salad dressings and sauces -- which was a table-model cement mixer. When health officials told the owner that it certainly was not "approved," he immediately bought another, "rust-free," mixer. (Health authorities had come to the restaurant on a complaint that a screw had turned up in a customer's kabob.) [The Local (Stockholm), 3-30-2013]

-- Chad Pregracke, 38, a Mississippi River legend, spends nine months a year hauling heavy-duty litter out of waterways with his crew of 12. He told CNN in March that he has yanked up 218 washing machines, 19 tractors, four pianos and nearly 1,000 refrigerators -- totaling over 3,500 tons of trash -- and has collected the world's largest array of bottles with messages inside (63). [CNN, 4-18-2013]

-- Eliel Santos fishes the grates of New York City seven days a week, reeling in enough bounty to sustain him for the last eight years, he told the New York Post in April. The "fishing line" Santos, 38, uses is dental floss, with electrician's tape and Blue-Touch mouse glue -- equipment that "he controls with the precision of an archer," the Post reported. His biggest catch ever was a $1,800 (pawned value) gold and diamond bracelet, but the most popular current items are iPhones, which texting-on-the-move pedestrians apparently have trouble hanging onto. [New York Post, 4-28-2013]

-- Tyshekka Collier, 36, was arrested in Spartanburg, S.C., in March after she had rushed to her son's elementary school after a call that he was suspended. As she burst into the office, angry at her son for getting into trouble, she saw a pouting boy with his head down and slapped him, thinking he was hers. He wasn't. (After apologizing, she then managed to locate her son and promptly slapped him around). [WYFF-TV (Greenville), 3-28-2013]

-- When Evan Ebel was killed in a roadside shootout in March, it was clear that he was the man who had days earlier gunned down the head of the Colorado prison system (and his wife) at the front door of their home and then fled (and killed another man while on the lam). Ebel should not even have been free at the time, having been accidentally released from prison in January only because a judge's assistant had mistakenly marked Ebel's multiple prison terms to be served "concurrently" instead of one following the other ("consecutively"). (The supervising judge "extend(ed) condolences" to the families of Ebel's victims.) [Reuters, 4-1-2013]

-- Apparently feeling feisty after a successful stint in February hosting the Bassmaster Classic, local officials in Tulsa, Okla., announced in April that they were considering preparing a bid for the 2024 Summer Olympics. (The Winter Games sometimes get awarded to small venues, but never the Summer Games.) [Associated Press via ABC News, 4-27-2013]

-- The Discovery Channel announced a new survival show to debut this summer, "Naked and Afraid," dropping off a man and a woman (strangers), without tools or clothes, to fend for themselves on an isolated Maldives island. Among the previews: Ms. Kellie Nightlinger, 38, a self-described "ultimate survivalist," finally thought after two weeks of nearly starving that she could attract fish close enough to be snatched up (as a New York Daily News reporter put it) "us(ing) her ladyparts as bait to catch fish between her legs." Said a Discovery Channel executive: "Survival shows are so common now that it's gotten more and more difficult to convince the audience that what they're watching is something extreme." [New York Daily News, 4-14-2013]

Location, Location, Location: The New Delhi, India, neighborhood of Lutyens' Delhi houses some of the richest people in the country in comparatively modest mansions, with the city's real estate bubble inflating prices into nine figures, though home sales are rare, according to a March New York Times dispatch. In the similarly wealthy city of Hong Kong, in the "gritty, working-class West Kowloon neighborhood" where the laborers serving the rich live, about 100,000 dwell in pitiable housing, including the increasing number who rent what are basically stacks of wire sleep cages, measuring about 16 square feet each (and offering no protection against bedbugs). An Associated Press reporter found one tenant paying the equivalent of about $167 a month for his mesh digs. [New York Times, 3-3-2013] [Associated Press, 2-7-2013]

Finally, Herson Torres was freed. As Bloomberg Business Week reported step-by-step in April, Torres was recruited by a "Defense Intelligence Agency operative" to rob a Virginia bank in order to test first-responder reaction times. If caught, Torres's arrest would be removed, said "Theo," the operative. The skeptical Torres asked advice of various authority figures, including two bemused lawyers, but "Theo" was able to calm them all with a dazzling display of CIA jargon and procedures. Torres was indeed arrested, and "Theo" indeed sprang him (but with a judicial order that was forged). Ultimately, "Theo" was revealed to be frustrated computer-techie Matthew Brady, 26, who lives with his mother and grandmother in Matoaca, Va., and despite his obviously world-class bluffing skill, he pleaded guilty in May and was ordered treated for his paranoid schizophrenia and delusional disorder. [Bloomberg Business Week, 4-18-2013]

Even the editor of News of the Weird gets bored: (1) A man in his 70s in Burnaby, British Columbia, was rescued in January after being pinned for three days under fallen debris inside his seriously cluttered home (with "ceiling-high mounds of garbage," wrote the Canadian Press). (Ho-hum.) (2) In Lianjiang City, China, in January, Peng Xinhua, 101, joined a long line of returns-from-the-dead. Following a fall, she had become stiff and without a heartbeat, her two daughters said, and burial was scheduled. Just before the funeral, as relatives and friends were washing her body, Peng opened her eyes and calmly greeted them. [Canadian Press via Canadian Broadcasting Corp., 1-15-2013] [Shanghai Daily, 1-24-2013]

(1) A 5-year-old boy in rural Cumberland County, Ky., accidentally shot and killed his 2-year-old sister in April, firing his own .22-caliber rifle. The weapon (a "Crickett") is marketed as "My First Rifle" by the Keystone Sporting Arms company. (2) Henry Gribbohm, 30, admitted in April that he had blown his $2,600 life savings trying to win an Xbox at a rigged ball-toss game at a Manchester, N.H., carnival, lamenting to WBZ-TV, "For once in my life, I happened to become that sucker." (Gribbohm complained to the operator, but was given only a large stuffed banana as consolation. However, when news broke, an Internet website took up a collection and purchased the banana from him for $2,600.) [Louisville Courier-Journal via USA Today, 5-2-2013] [WBZ-TV (Boston), 5-6-2013]

Thanks This Week to Sandy Pearlman, Susan Fowler-Nice, and Paul Peterson, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

Caribou Baby, a Brooklyn, N.Y., "eco-friendly maternity, baby and lifestyle store," has recently been hosting gatherings at which parents exchange tips on "elimination communication" -- the weaning of infants without benefit of diapers (as reported in April by the New York Times). Parents watch for cues, such as a certain "cry or grimace" that supposedly signals that the tot urgently needs to be hoisted onto a potty. (Eventually, they say, the potty serves to cue the baby.) Dealing with diapers is so unpleasant, they say, that cleaning an occasional mess becomes tolerable. The little darlings' public appearances sometimes call for diapers, but can also be dealt with by taking the baby behind the nearest tree. One parent even admitted, "I have absolutely been at parties and witnessed people putting their baby over the sink." [New York Times, 4-18-2013]

-- Washington, D.C.'s WRC-TV reported in March that a woman from the Maryland suburbs showed a reporter a traffic citation she had just received, ticketing her for driving in the left lane on Interstate 95 in Laurel while going only 63 mph -- compared to the posted ("maximum") speed of 65. The citation read, "Failure of driver ... to keep right." The station's meteorologist noted that winds that day were gusting to 40 mph and that the woman might simply have been trying to control her car. [WRC-TV, 3-13-2013]

-- The principal and head teacher at a Godalming, England, special-needs school were reported by employees in March for allowing a student with self-harm issues to cut herself, under staff supervision. (Unsted Park School enrolls kids aged 7 to 19 who have high-functioning autism.) Teachers were to hand the girl a sterilized blade, wait outside a bathroom while she acted out, checking up on her at two-minute intervals, and then dress the girl's wounds once she had finished. The school reportedly abandoned the policy six days after implementing it. [GetSurrey.co.uk (Guildford, England), 3-25-2013]

-- Last year, according to Chicago's WBBM-TV, Palmen Motors in Kenosha, Wis., sold a brand-new GMC Terrain SUV to an elderly couple, 90 and 89, in which the husband was legally blind and in hospice care, on morphine, and the wife had dementia and could barely walk. According to the couple's daughter, it was her brother, David McMurray, who wanted the SUV but could not qualify financially and so drove his mother from Illinois to Kenosha to sign the documents while a Palmen employee traveled to Illinois to get the father's signature (three weeks before he passed away, it turns out). An attorney for Palmen Motors told the TV station that the company regretted its role and would buy the vehicle back. [WBBM-TV, 3-13-2013]

-- The city council of Oita, Japan, refused to seat a recently elected member because he refused to remove the mask he always wears in public. Professional wrestler "Skull Reaper A-ji" said his fans would not accept him as authentic if he strayed from his character. Some masked U.S. wrestlers, and especially the popular Mexican "lucha libre" wrestlers, share the sentiment. (At press time, the issue was apparently still unresolved in Oita.) [Daily Telegraph (London), 3-13-2013]

-- At a Jan. 8 public meeting, Cooper City, Fla., Commissioner Lisa Mallozzi, annoyed with local activist (and former commissioner) Gladys Wilson, told her (according to video and audio of the meeting), "(B)low me." Wilson, 81, said later she did not understand what the phrase meant; Mallozzi said later that she meant only that she needed to blow her nose. [WPLG-TV (Miami), 1-14-2013]

-- Passive possession of child pornography is not a victimless crime, authorities say, because by definition a child had been abused in the creation of the image, but that reasoning was no relief for New Zealander Ronald Clark, who was sentenced to three months in jail in Auckland in April for watching pornographic cartoon videos of short-statured elves and pixies. A child-protection activist acknowledged that no child was harmed in the creation of the Japanese anime artwork, but insisted that it was still injurious because "(I)t's all part of that spectrum." Clark said he wondered if he might also be convicted for viewing sexual stick-figure drawings. [Stuff.co.nz (Auckland), 4-21-2013]

-- John Leopold, the former county executive of Anne Arundel County, Md., serving 30 days in jail for illegally forcing his government security detail and another employee to perform personal errands, apparently wasted no time in March displaying a similar attitude toward his jailers. He quickly demanded that the jailers serve him a breakfast of Cheerios, skim milk, bananas and orange juice instead of the scheduled fare. (Last year, Anders Breivik, the imprisoned 2011 mass murderer of 77 in Norway, famously began a hunger strike when rebuffed over his 27-page list of demands, including Internet access and a series of menu and climate-control improvements.) [Associated Press via Yahoo News, 3-20-2013] [BBC News, 11-9-2012]

California street gangs stage fights whose locations can be accurately predicted using the same algorithm that anthropologists use to predict where lions and hyenas will fight in the wild to protect their own territories. A UCLA researcher, using the standard "Lotka-Volterra" equation on 13 equal-sized criminal gangs in the Boyle Heights neighborhood in east Los Angeles, produced a table of probabilities showing how far from each gang's border any fights were likely to occur. In the period 1999 to 2002, the formula correctly showed that about 58 percent of shootings occurred within 0.2 miles of the border, 83 percent within 0.4 miles, and 97 percent within 1 mile. [Daily Mail (London), 3-26-2013]

Animal-rights activists have had success in recent years making covert videos of abuses on farms and in slaughterhouses, showing defenseless animals being cruelly mistreated in patterns unlikely to be caught by government inspectors making orderly, rare visits. However, as The New York Times reported in April, legislators in Iowa, Utah, Missouri and almost a dozen other states believe that the greater problem is that such videos "defame" the operators of these farms and slaughterhouses, and the states have proposed to criminalize the activists' conduct, which might be "trespassing" in that they gain access only by subterfuge, for instance, pretending earnestly to apply for jobs. The typical state legislation would also require that any such video must immediately be turned over, not to government or the media, but to the operator -- allegedly, so the abuse could be dealt with, but also coincidentally denying the activists their most valuable tool. [New York Times, 4-7-2013]

-- Just Because It Worked Once: Carl Bellenir, 48, was arrested in San Luis Obispo, Calif., in February after he had successfully cashed in, at a Santa Barbara Bank & Trust, several rolls of pennies that had been stuffed into rolls labeled for dimes. Bellenir apparently did not realize that the rolls would be examined later in the day and so returned the very next morning to the same bank and tried it again. Police were called, and Bellenir fled, but he was captured down the street at a Bank of America trying the same trick. [Tribune News (San Luis Obispo), 2-7-2013]

-- Dateline Saudi Arabia: (1) A newspaper in the capital city of Riyadh reported in April that three men from the United Arab Emirates were booted out of a religious festival by Saudi morality police because they were thought to be "too handsome" and would make Saudi women improperly attracted to them. (2) Another Saudi daily reported in April that a schoolteacher had agreed to marry her suitor but only provided that the man take on two of her colleagues as extra wives. (Saudi Arabia allows men as many as four.) The newspaper reported that the woman had rented three apartments in the same building, signaling that the deal had perhaps been sealed. [ArabianBusiness.com, 4-16-2013] [Gulf News, 4-21-2013]

Kent Hendrix heroically rushed to the aid of a female neighbor being assaulted by an acquaintance on their residential street in Millcreek, Utah, in April and scared the man off (though he soon turned himself in). Hendrix is a bishop in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and, more to the point, a black belt in karate, and even more to the point, was aiming his favorite samurai sword at the attacker. Said Hendrix, "His eyes just got huge ... that he was staring down 29 inches of razor." [KSTU-TV (Salt Lake City), 4-23-2013]

Thanks This Week to Cheryl Juba, Kevin Kawaguchi, Peter Wardley, and Paul Krause, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

In March, twin sisters Louise and Martine Fokkens, 70, announced their joint retirement after more than 50 years each on the job -- as Amsterdam prostitutes. (In February, the minimum age for prostitutes in the Netherlands was raised to 21, but there is no maximum.) The twins estimated they had 355,000 client-visits between them, and Martine noted that she still has one devoted regular who she'll have to disappoint. Louise, though, appeared happier to hang up her mattress for good because of arthritis. The sisters complained about the legalization of brothels in 2000 (with East European women and pimps out-hustling the more genteel Dutch women) and ensuing taxation (which required the women to take on more clients). [Daily Telegraph (London), 3-14-2013]

-- "Traditional Taiwanese funerals (combine) somber mourning with louder, up-tempo entertainment to fire up grieving spirits," reported BBC News in February. They are tailor-made, in other words, for Ms. Liu Jun-Lin, 30, and her Filial Daughters Band with their acrobatic dance routines because Liu has the reputation as Taiwan's most famous professional mourner. After the musical festivities, Liu dons a white robe and crawls on her hands and knees to the coffin, where she "performs her signature wail." [BBC News, 2-25-2013]

-- Norwegian Wood: A 12-hour TV miniseries shown this winter on Norway's government channel NRK, "National Firewood Night," was conceived as a full series, then cut to "only" 12 hours, eight of which focused entirely on a live fireplace. Nearly a million people tuned in to the series, and at one point 60 text messages came in complaining about whether the wood in the fireplace should have been placed with bark up or bark down. "(F)irewood," said the show's host, "is the foundation of our lives." A New York Times dispatch noted that a best-selling book, "Solid Wood," sold almost as many copies in Norway, proportional to the population, as a book's selling 10 million copies in the U.S. [New York Times, 2-19-2013]

-- Imagine the Person Who First Suggested This: The newest beauty-treatment rage in China, according to Chinese media quoted on the Inquisitr.com website in March, is the "fire facial," in which alcohol and a "secret elixir" are daubed on the face and set ablaze for a few seconds, then extinguished. According to "ancient Chinese medicine," this will burn off "dull" skin -- and also alleviate the common cold and reduce obesity. [Inquisitr.com, 3-7-2013] [CBS News, 12-5-2007]

-- Most of Iceland's 320,000 inhabitants are at least distantly related to each other, leading the country to compile the "Book of Icelanders" database of family connections dating back 1,200 years. With "accidental" incest thus a genuine problem, three software engineers recently created a mobile phone app that allows strangers to "bump" phones with each other and know, instantly, whether they are closely related. In its first few days of release in April, the developers said it had already been used almost 4,000 times. [Associated Press via USA Today, 4-18-2013]

-- New York City Councilman Dan Halloran was charged in April with aiding state Sen. Malcolm Smith's alleged bribery scheme to run for mayor -- thus bringing Halloran's extraordinary back story light as the first "open" pagan to be elected to office in the U.S. Halloran converted in the 1980s to medieval Theodish, whose outfits and ceremonies resemble scenes from Dungeons & Dragons -- horns, sacrifices, feasts, duels using spears and public floggings. (The Village Voice reported in 2011 that Halloran was the "First Atheling" of his own Theodish tribe of 100, called New Normandy, but Halloran said in April that today he is merely an "elder.") [New York Post, 4-6-2013]

-- The Lord Works in Strange Ways: At least 11 people were killed and 36 injured on March 15 in Tlaxcala, Mexico, when a truck full of fireworks exploded as Catholic celebrants gathered. Rather than remain in the safety of their homes, they had been moved to honor Jesus Tepactepec, the patron saint of a village named after him. [Reuters via NBC News, 3-15-2013]

-- Recent Icons: (1) In March, a vegetable wholesaler in India's Jharkland state decided that a pumpkin he purchased was so enormous (about 190 pounds) that it must be a reincarnation of the god Shiva -- and he began worshipping it. A priest counseled the man to continue his fealty until the following Sunday, a holiday, after which he should carve it into pieces for devotees. (2) In Buri Ram, Thailand, in March, a woman sliced open a sausage to find the distinctive body of a very small kitten, which she took to be a symbol of some sort deserving to be placed onto an altar. Neighbors gathered to pray to it, also, and several said they had considered the woman so fortunate that they played her age (52) in a local lottery, and won. [Times of India, 3-5-2013] [Bangkok Post, 3-18-2013]

An unnamed man was hospitalized in April in Tucson, Ariz., after firefighters, finding him unconscious at 3 a.m. pinned under an SUV parked in his driveway, lifted the vehicle and dragged him to safety. A police spokesperson learned that the man was trying "a stunt in which he was going to put the SUV in reverse, jump out and lay on the ground behind it, have the vehicle (roll) over him, and then get up and (get back into) the SUV in time to stop it before it collided with anything." [Arizona Daily Star, 4-12-2013]

While "comprehensive immigration reform" winds through the U.S. political process, a few countries (including the United States) have already severely bent the nationalistic standards supposedly regulating entry of foreigners. The U.S., Britain, Canada and Austria allow rich investors who pass background checks to qualify for an express lane to residence or citizenship, and the line is even less onerous in the Caribbean nations of Dominica and St. Kitts & Nevis, which offer quick citizenship for investments of $100,000 and $250,000, respectively -- the latter especially valuable, allowing access to 139 countries including all of Europe. (The U.S. minimum is $1 million, or half that for investment in an "economically depressed" area, but the reward is only a "green card," with citizenship still five years away.) [Associated Press via WNEW-TV (New York City), 2-12-2013]

The man who was "citizen of the year" in Waynesville, Ohio, in 2006, businessman Ron Kronenberger, 53, was charged in January with belt-whipping one of his tenants on his bare buttocks -- though he had a good reason, he said, because the tenant was late again with the rent. A magistrate said he intended to drop the charge in six months if Kronenberger stayed out of trouble, but in March, a man who worked for Kronenberger filed a lawsuit accusing him of spanking him on four occasions, using a belt and a paddle. [Dayton Daily News, 2-20-2013, WLWT-TV (Cincinnati), 3-29-2013]

Questionable Judgment: The Narcotics Task Force of Jackson County, Miss., arrested Henry Ha Nguyen, 41, in April as operator of a large marijuana grow house -- a facility that would normally reek of the distinctive pot fragrance. However, Nguyen had thought of that and tried to mask the smell, but chose the alternative scent produced by buckets full of what appeared to be human feces. [WLOX-TV (Biloxi) via WXIX-TV (Cincinnati), 4-10-2013]

(1) A vendor at the largest bazaar in Buenos Aires has recently been selling knock-off "toy poodles" that were actually artistically groomed ferrets raised on steroids. A news dispatch from June 2012 suggested that such a report might be an "urban legend," but a Buenos Aires TV investigation exposed the scam in March, revealing two victims, one of whom paid the equivalent of about $150 for his "pure-bred." (2) Wayne Klinkel's golden retriever Sundance, locked in a car while Klinkel, of Helena, Mont., went to dinner in December, set about dining himself on whatever he found, including the five $100 bills Klinkel had stashed. Klinkel managed to recover the scraps (in precisely the way you suspect he did), washed and dried them several times, and as of early April, was still awaiting word whether the U.S. Treasury would exchange his scraps for five new ones. [Huffington Post, 4-8-2013] [Independent Record (Helena), 4-8-2013]

Thanks This Week to Lincoln Lancaster, Gary DaSilva, Bruce Hilpert, Dick Sonier, and Alex Boese, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.