Florida real estate agent Kristen Kearney was inundated with interest in a condo she listed in Lake Worth after photos of the $100,000 property and its Budweiser beer can decor went viral. The former owner, now deceased, made it "his life's mission to wallpaper his home in beer cans, and he did it," Kearney said. "He even created a crown molding look with the cans." United Press International reported every wall and ceiling in the condo is covered with actual beer cans, except the bathroom. Kearney said the property is under contract with a backup offer. [United Press International, 9/15/2020]

Come Again?

A man identifying himself as Jesus Christ appeared before Rickergate court in Carlisle, England, on Sept. 15 after being arrested by British Transport Police on suspicion that he did not buy a ticket to ride a train from Edinburgh to Carlisle. When asked to state a plea, the man replied, "There is a not guilty plea; I don't need to plead," the News & Star reported. In response to a request for his address, he said: "No fixed abode, or Yellow House, Albion, Mauritius." The bearded defendant wore a hood and a green blindfold throughout his hearing; he was returned to custody as prosecutors considered his case. [News & Star, 9/15/2020]

The Passing Parade

Windermere, Florida, fifth-grader Ian Golba, 11, visited the principal's office on Sept. 15 after his teacher asked him to remove his Hooters face mask. "She said it was not appropriate for school and I asked her why and she said if you really want to know why go ask the principal," Ian told WESH. The principal at Sunset Park Elementary School backed up the teacher, asking Ian three times to remove the mask, which he did. But Greg Golba, Ian's dad, wants to know what the problem was. "I don't think it's offensive at all. It's just a restaurant," Greg said. [WESH, 9/16/2020]

Compelling Explanation

Tarrant County, Texas, Sheriff's Deputy Jay Allen Rotter, 36, called 911 on Aug. 26 to report that his girlfriend, Leslie Lynn Hartman, 46, had shot herself in the head with his duty weapon as they shared a hug in their bedroom, telling the dispatcher "she is done" and he "would have stopped her if he could have," according to Denton police. But as police investigators analyzed physical evidence and Rotter's electronics over the following weeks, they came to identify Rotter as a suspect, leading to his arrest on Sept. 14, reported NBC5. According to the arrest affidavit, the deputy had been active in a chat room called Discord that night, where he posted that he had "just sent a 9 millie in this ... hippie," and phone and computer records showed the two had been arguing about the shooting of a milk carton in the backyard before the alleged murder. Rotter was charged with murder and tampering with evidence and is being held on $1.15 million bond in the Denton City Jail. [NBC5, 9/16/2020]

Inexplicable

Jimmy Senda of Racine, Wisconsin, takes a walk along the beach on Lake Michigan every morning, where he collects "sea glass and random stuff -- because I like to do artwork at home with the stuff that I find," he told FOX6. On Sept. 15, he came across a curious package, "wrapped in aluminum foil, and around it, it had a pink rubber band," he said. "Curiosity got to me, so I popped it open and it looked like a chicken breast," but on closer inspection, he determined, "it was a brain." The package also contained flowers and paper with what appear to be Mandarin characters printed on it. Senda called police, who turned the package over to the Racine County Medical Examiner's Office and later announced the brain was "not consistent with a human brain," although they were still trying to determine what kind of animal it came from. [FOX6, 9/16/2020]

Government in Action

Ocean Township, New Jersey, listed the home of 89-year-old Glen Kristi Goldenthal for sale on Sept. 9, foreclosing on the property because Goldenthal owed 6 cents on back taxes from 2019. The tax shortfall had accrued to more than $300, triggering the sale, which alerted Goldenthal's daughter, Lisa Suhay, in Virginia. NBC New York reported the outraged Suhay began calling everyone in the township's office to explain that her mother suffers from Alzheimer's and probably forgot about the bill. Suhay took care of the debt, but for her mother, "(T)his isn't over ... She's called me dozens of times in the last 24 hours," asking about her house and where she's going to live. Mayor Christopher Siciliano was apologetic, but Suhay remained incensed: "Shame on anybody who can't think far outside the box enough to come up with six cents in an office full of people." [NBC New York, 9/13/2020]

Bright Idea

A commuter boarded a bus between Swinton and Manchester, England, on Sept. 14 sporting what one fellow passenger thought was a "funky mask" until it started to move. The face mask turned out to be a live snake, wrapped around the man's neck and over his nose and mouth, the BBC reported. Another passenger took photos and posted them on Twitter, commenting "each to their own and all that." "No one batted an eyelid," another rider said. Transport for Greater Manchester, however, said in a statement that "snakeskin -- especially when still attached to the snake" is not suitable for masks. [BBC, 9/16/2020]

Fashion of the Times

In response to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, French fashion house Louis Vuitton announced it will release a protective visor Oct. 30 in its stores worldwide that Vogue reports is "the most luxurious take on a plastic face shield that we've seen to date." The LV Shield is trimmed with the designer's signature monogram and gold studs engraved with the company's logo. It doubles as a sun visor, changing from clear to tinted when exposed to sunlight, and also can be flipped up and worn as more of a cap. Although a price for the shield has not been set, Vogue estimates it to be somewhere between the cost of a typical Vuitton hat, $700, and sunglasses, $800. [Vogue, 9/10/2020]

Duuuude

Colin Sullivan, who grows cannabis plants outside his home in New Brunswick, Canada, caught a little thief in his garden on Sept. 8, the Daily Mail reported. Sullivan took four photos of a mouse nibbling on the stems of the plants -- then found the little rodent passed out in a pile of leaves. "He's missing an ear so it may be self-medication for his PTSD but I still think it's time for an intervention," Sullivan posted on Facebook. Sullivan re-homed the mouse to a cage, where he was weaned to just one medium leaf per day. "It's been a couple of rough days for our little baked buddy here and despite a belly ache and a wicked bad case of the munchies I think he'll make a full recovery," Sullivan wrote. [Daily Mail, 9/10/2020]

Police Report

-- Daytona Beach, Florida, police arrived at the home of Lovely Butts, 64, on the evening of Sept. 14, where they found a female juvenile relative standing in the front yard, smelling of bleach. The girl, who was described in the police report as Butts' "primary caregiver," told police she had argued with Butts about "the location of her medicine" and that Butts had thrown bleach at her, striking her in the face and mouth. Butts also allegedly threatened to pistol whip the girl. The Smoking Gun reported that Butts was charged with aggravated assault and child abuse; police confiscated her unloaded pistol from her nightstand. [The Smoking Gun, 9/16/2020]

-- Mark King of Wolcottville, Indiana, went to war with imaginary enemies on Sept. 13 after using methamphetamine on the previous two days, according to the LaGrange County Sheriff's Department. Deputies responding to reports of a man swinging a broom handle around and hollering in a yard, found King as he left a neighbor's garage after having thrown a gun through the building's window. Previously, police determined, King had allegedly shot up the inside of his own home, imagining that people were trying to break in and steal some of his belongings. WANE reported King was transported to a hospital and later charged with possession of meth and paraphernalia. [WANE, 9/14/2020]

Cynthia Lynn Teeple, 47, of Jacksboro, Tennessee, was charged with public intoxication after Campbell County Sheriff's deputies found her topless in a LaFollette backyard with two miniature horses on Aug. 30, according to authorities. WLAF reported the homeowner told deputies Teeple had been eating grass and dirt from the horse enclosure, and also chewed on one of the horses' manes. Teeple then volunteered that "the horse's hair is made of Laffy Taffy and Airhead candy," according to the arrest report, and admitted she had taken methamphetamine the day before. [WLAF, 9/8/2020]

Bright Ideas

-- In Botswana, cattle are left to graze and roam during the day, but that makes them vulnerable to attacks by lions, leopards and other carnivores, so two conservation biologists from the University of New South Wales in Australia have come up with an idea to allow both cattle and cats to co-exist, NPR reported. Because big cats hunt using the element of surprise, the biologists came up with a way to make the predators believe they'd been seen by their prey and then abandon the hunt. "We tested this by painting one-third of a cattle herd with artificial eye spots (on their backsides)," explained Cameron Radford, and over four years, "none of the cows that we painted with artificial eye spots were killed by ambush predators." Village chiefs and native farmers "look forward to us coming back and painting more eyes on bums," Radford said. [NPR, 8/23/2020]

-- Conducting choir practice indoors was out of the question for Mark Potvin, instructor of music at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, given the school's COVID-19 protocols, and finding a space outside posed a challenge until, "I was driving past the city pool," Potvin told KCRG, and "noticed they were draining the pool." Officials at Decorah Park and Rec gave their blessing, and now choir members rehearse while standing in the empty pool, socially distanced and masked. Luther College has five choirs and one of the nation's largest collegiate music programs. [KCRG, 9/10/2020]

Least Competent Criminals

-- John Travis Ross, 33, and Joshua Ray Corban, 18, were charged with conspiracy and attempting to smuggle contraband into the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility in Pearl, Mississippi, after a drone they used as a delivery device became tangled in a net above the prison fence, according to a Department of Corrections statement. The Associated Press reported the drone was caught on Aug. 26 and carried 2 ounces of marijuana, a cellphone, cigarette lighters, phone chargers and headphones, corrections commissioner Burl Cain said. Investigators were able to trace the drone's flight and discovered security video showing the men launching it. Cain said officials plan to reprogram the drone and use it at the state's maximum-security prison in Parchman. [Associated Press, 9/9/2020]

-- Three teenage girls in Clinton, Connecticut, have been arrested and charged with stealing a duck after photos of them surfaced on social media, according to police. WTNH reported the girls took a duck named Quackers out of a pen in mid-August at the Grove Garden Center Nursery, where it was recovering from a raccoon attack, and posted photos of themselves with Quackers at the town beach and a house party. The girls were charged with larceny and trespassing. Quackers is still missing. [WTNH, 9/10/2020]

Suspicions Confirmed

Brittany Keech of Belding, Michigan, got an unexpected bit of news with her mail on Sept. 8. "Sitting right on top of the mail," she told WXMI, was a postcard dated 100 years ago -- Oct. 29, 1920. "Yeah, that's a little too slow," Keech said. The Halloween greeting from young Flossie Burgess was addressed to her cousins: "I just finished my history lesson and am going to bed pretty soon." A USPS spokesperson said, "In most cases ... old letters and postcards -- sometimes purchased at flea markets, antique shops and even online -- are re-entered into our system ... (and) as long as there is a deliverable address and postage, the card or letter gets delivered." [WXMI, 9/9/2020]

Ewwwww

-- An unnamed 17-year-old girl in Bokaro, India underwent surgery on Aug. 31 to remove a 15-pound hairball from her stomach following years of obsessive hair-chewing, Metro News reported. A team of doctors led by Dr. G.N. Sahu initially thought the mass was a tumor, but discovered the hairball during the six-hour surgery. The girl was reported to be in stable condition following the procedure. [Metro News, 9/7/2020]

-- Doctors at a hospital in Dagestan, Russia, were shocked to discover the source of a woman's stomach distress was a 4-foot-long snake that had apparently slithered into her mouth as she slept outside her home in Levashi village. In a video of the procedure, a doctor is heard to say, "Let's see what this is," Yahoo News Australia reported, as a tube is inserted down the anesthetized woman's throat. Local residents say such incidents are not unheard of in the mountainous area. [Yahoo News, 9/1/2020]

Obsessions

Akiko Obata, who lives in Chiba Prefecture in Japan, holds the Guinness World Record for the largest collection of Sampuru, the fake food restaurants use to promote their offerings. Sampuru is an important part of Japanese food culture, according to Oddity Central, and after 15 years of collecting, Obata now has more than 8,000 individual items filling an entire room in her house. "Replicas are not real food, but I truly respect how each of them are made to look so real," Obata said. [Oddity Central, 9/3/2020]

Irony

Bounty Cheramy, 22, smelling of alcohol and swaying back and forth, was arrested and charged with drunk driving on Aug. 30 after his Mazda allegedly struck an electronic traffic sign flashing the message, "Drive Sober or Get Pulled Over," according to a police affidavit. Officers in Port Charlotte, Florida, said Cheramy told them he had been on his phone and "suddenly struck something" but was unsure what it was. His car sustained heavy front-end damage, and the nearby sign was wrecked, The Smoking Gun reported. The affidavit also noted Cheramy recorded a blood alcohol content twice the legal limit in two breath tests. [The Smoking Gun, 9/2/2020]

Overreaction

A 34-year-old Wichita, Kansas, man died after a disagreement over leftover barbecue beans escalated, KWCH reported. On Aug. 2, Ryan Speight returned to the home he shared with his uncle, David Staley, 57, and went to the kitchen, where Staley questioned him about eating the beans, according to an arrest affidavit. Staley told police Speight became upset, pushing and punching Staley, who, in response, picked up a knife from the counter and "jabbed Ryan one time in the chest." Staley was charged with voluntary manslaughter. [KWCH, 9/10/2020]

Awesome!

World War II veteran Suttie Economy, 94, of Roanoke, Virginia, developed a taste for Juicy Fruit gum during the war and is well-known around town for passing out sticks of his favorite flavor to everyone he meets. Now, CNN reports, Economy has been granted his dying wish: to be buried in a casket painted to look like a package of Juicy Fruit. After initially having his request for permission turned down, Economy's friend Sammy Oakey, owner of Oakey's Funeral Service, received a call from a Mars Wrigley company vice president approving the use of its logo. The company even delivered 250 packs of gum to Economy's family. Meanwhile, Economy is living at the Virginia Veterans Care Clinic, where his health is improving. [CNN, 9/9/2020]

Ander Christensen, 27, of Lincoln, Nebraska, has had to take time away from his job to field the media requests that have been pouring in since his Aug. 31 appearance before the Lincoln City Council, reported The Washington Post. Reading from a script, Christensen, whose father, Roy, is a councilman, made an impassioned plea against the widespread use of the term "boneless chicken wings," pointing out that "boneless chicken wings are just chicken tenders" and don't "actually come from the wing of a chicken." Laughter and applause broke out in the chamber as Christensen made his presentation, and his father said the council was "taking the matter under advisement. ... He's a chemical engineer by profession," he said of his son, "but he's a comic at heart." [The Washington Post, 9/4/2020]

Bright Idea

Officials in Amsterdam have installed 12 hemp-filled urinals around that city's notorious red-light district in an attempt to control if not eliminate late-night public urination, or "wild peeing." The boxes, called GreenPees, resemble planters, according to CNN, and the hemp filters inside turn urine into an organic fertilizer and water that feed the plantings on top. During initial trials in 2018, inventor Richard de Vries said, "there was a 50% reduction in wild peeing. It was a great success." For his next project, de Vries is researching how electricity can be generated whenever someone pees into one of his GreenPees. [CNN, 8/21/2020]

Beliefs

Nguyen Van Chien, 92, from a village in the southern Mekong Delta in Vietnam, hasn't had a haircut in almost 80 years. A follower of Dua, a religion banned in Vietnam, Chien believes he has been called to grow his hair, Reuters reported, and his dreadlocks now measure about 16 1/2 feet. "I believe if I cut my hair I will die," Chien said. "I only nurture it, cover it in a scarf to keep it dry and clean and looking nice." [Reuters, 8/25/2020]

Great Art!

-- Three years ago, Emma Aldenryd, 18, of Aarhus, Denmark, discovered she had a rare condition called dermatographia, which causes her skin to temporarily swell up when touched. Oddity Central reports that the teen has decided to use her skin as a canvas on which she traces artwork with a pencil and posts the images to Instagram. "I started by drawing quite random stuff like a bunch of words," Aldenryd said. "Lots of people question whether it hurts, but my dermatographia has never hurt." Antihistamines treat the itch associated with her condition -- but they also stop the swelling, so she doesn't take them. [Oddity Central, 8/24/2020]

-- Drivers on U.S. 70 in southeast New Mexico have wondered about the 18 wooden chairs set up six feet apart in rows on a hill between Clovis and Portales. KRQE reports they are the work of three local sisters who wanted to express their feelings about socially distanced learning as schools struggle to open. "I have a daughter that's a teacher and both my sisters have kids who are in school and this is really, really difficult for them not to be in school," said Alyssa Idsinga, who created the art installation along with April Rutter and Abigail Pritchett. "It's just so lonely." She had the chairs in a shed and said the installation would remain as long as the pandemic continues or until the weather destroys it. [KRQE, 8/27/2020]

Compelling Explanation

Nicole Dozois, 40, was arrested in Largo, Florida, on Aug. 23 on charges of domestic battery after allegedly attacking her father "due to his flatulence," according to an arrest affidavit. The Smoking Gun reported that Dozois, who shares a room in a home in Largo with her 59-year-old father, allegedly punched him in the face numerous times, leaving him with a "bloodied left eye and scratches all over his neck," authorities said. She pleaded not guilty before being released, with the proviso that she have no contact with her father. [Smoking Gun, 8/24/2020]

Wait, What?

Villas Las Estrellas is a small settlement of about 100 people on King George Island in Antarctica with a school, a bank, a church and even a souvenir shop, but if you want to live there, you and your family -- including your children -- will be required to have your appendixes removed before you arrive. The reason, Medium reports, has a logic grounded in history: The town has a small clinic, but not always a surgeon, and the nearest hospital is more than 600 miles away and difficult to reach. In 1961, Russian explorer and surgeon Leonid Rogozov at the similarly isolated Novolazarevskaya Station suffered life-threatening acute appendicitis and was forced to operate on himself -- without anesthesia. The two-hour operation was successful, and Rogozov returned to work two weeks later. [Medium, 8/22/2020]

The Continuing Crisis

Dr. Devainder Goli, was watching a movie on his phone as his Tesla drove on autopilot near Spring Hope, North Carolina, early on Aug. 26, according to authorities, before narrowly missing a Nash County Sheriff's deputy and a State Highway Patrol trooper and crashing instead into both of their cruisers. "It could have been very horrific," Nash County Sheriff Keith Stone told WRAL. The officers were conducting an overnight lane closure at the time of the accident. Goli was charged with a moving violation. "We need to understand that automation cannot do everything," Stone said. [WRAL, 8/26/2020]

Nuts!

Detectives with the Tulare County (California) Sheriff's Office arrested Bhavna Singh Sekon, 23, of Fresno, in late August on suspicion of involvement in an "elaborate" scheme to steal and sell pistachios, to the tune of almost $300,000. According to YourCentralValley.com, detectives were called to Setton Pistachio on Aug. 14 where employees reported someone using the name of a legitimate trucking company had picked up two tractor-trailer loads of pistachios but failed to deliver them. Sheriff's department spokeswoman Ashley Ritchie said detectives discovered the thieves had also stolen the trailers, which were equipped with GPS that allowed authorities to track them down. Sekon was charged with grand theft, looting, identity theft and conspiracy. [YourCentralValley.com, 8/27/2020]

Mother Tongue

The Scots Wikipedia is the world's largest open-access compendium of the Scots language, which has been enjoying something of a comeback recently, according to The Guardian, but controversy has arisen since it was revealed that a teenager from North Carolina, who does not speak Scots, is responsible for creating or editing nearly half the entries. Responding to the criticism, the unidentified 19-year-old expressed remorse "after years of my thinking I was doing good. I was only a 12-year-old kid when I started." [The Guardian, 8/26/2020]

Entrepreneurial Spirit

Paul Derham of Dorset, on the southwest coast of England, worked on cruise ships all over the world for 27 years before settling down and taking over two local ferries in Mudeford. As he has gazed out to the English Channel recently, he's seen some of the world's most famous cruise ships, moored and sidelined by the coronavirus pandemic, and he hit upon an idea: using his ferries to conduct tours around the huge, empty vessels. Ghost Cruise Tours offers 2 1/2-hour trips to a socially distanced 30 passengers at a time, and has become a hit. "I am completely overwhelmed with the attention," Derham told CNN Travel. He plans to run the tours through the fall as long as the weather holds out. [CNN Travel, 8/31/2020]