News of the Weird: December 2009 | The Beachside Resident

News of the Weird: December 2009

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Collared In June, after a monitored, endangered marsupial (a “woylie”) was killed in West Australia, scientists set out to recover the expensive radio collar transmitter it was wearing, but as they approached the signal, a 6-foot-long python swallowed the woylie and collar. The scientists captured the snake, intending to wait for the collar to pass through, but poachers broke into the Department of Environment and Conservation’s shelter and stole the python, surely intending to sell it. According to a June report in The West Australian, the scientists, aided by authorities, eventually picked up the radio transmissions again, arrested one poacher, and freed the snake from its impending life of captivity.

‘Artless Bastards New Zealand’s Waikato National Contemporary Art Award in September (worth the equivalent of $11,000) went to Dane Mitchell, whose entry consisted merely of discarded packaging materials from all the other exhibits vying for the prize. Mitchell called his pile “Collateral.” (Announcement of the winner was poorly received by the other contestants.) And at a Christie’s auction in September in New York City, London artist Gavin Turk’s empty, nondescript cardboard box (the size of an ordinary moving-company box) sold for $16,000. (Actually, it was a sculpture designed to look exactly like an empty, nondescript cardboard box.)

Mess With Texas In the tiny east Texas town of Tenaha, police allegedly extorted traveling motorists by subjecting them to bogus traffic stops, perhaps finding small amounts of drugs, and then offering to forgo prosecution if the motorists would forfeit their cars and other property. The forfeited items were then sold to fund a special police recreation account. Last year, the ACLU of Texas filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against both the police and local prosecutor Lynda Russell, and in September 2009, Russell asked the state attorney general if she could pay her legal expenses from the alleged extorted recreation account.

Caught At Their Own Game A nine-hour, 16-officer search of the home of alleged drug kingpin Michael Difalco, near Lakeland, FL, in March, apparently was not exciting enough. Surveillance video (from Difalco’s security system) released by police in September showed that the easily distracted officers also took time out to play spirited frames of bowling on Difalco’s Wii game. Since the detectives were unaware of the camera, they uninhibitedly pumped their fists and shouted gleefully with every strike. Police supervisors acknowledged the unprofessional behavior but said the search nonetheless was productive.

I’ll Have What Darwin’s Having During a three-week period in September and October, three couples in the Darwin, Australia, area aroused police attention for having uninhibited sex in public. On September 13, a 29-year-old man and a 23-year-old woman were fully engaged in their vehicle (stolen, said police) at a gas station in full view of passers-by. They persisted, ignoring a police officer’s order to stop. Two weeks later, an intoxicated couple taken into custody by police were seen having sex by the motorist following directly behind the police paddy wagon. On October 6, 25 miles south of Darwin, a 33-year-old man was charged with reckless driving after he crashed his car into a concrete drain while having sex with a 34-year-old woman in the front seat. (The woman later denied the charge, in earthy language, to a reporter from the Northern Territory News.)

Speaking Of Darwin… Among the species discovered recently in Papua New Guinea were tiny bear-like creatures, frogs with fangs, fish that grunt, kangaroos that live in trees, and what is probably the world’s largest rat (with no fear of humans). Scientists from Britain, the United States and Papua New Guinea announced the findings in September, among more than 40 new species from a jungle habitat a half-mile deep inside the centuries-dormant Mount Bosavi volcano crater.

Sean Hannity Doesn’t Want You To Read This: The births of two chicks on the same day at the Jerusalem Biblical Zoo in April was unusual enough but especially noteworthy because of the birds’ lineage. Their fathers were a gay vulture couple about 10 years ago, according to a report in the Israeli daily Haaretz, and zoo caretakers provided them an artificial egg to “incubate” until they could replace the egg with a just-hatched vulture, as if the male-male couple had birthed it. In “an insane coincidence,” said a zoo official, the two males eventually separated and paired with females, and those females hatched eggs on the same day last April. Two weeks ago, according to Haaretz, the two chicks achieved independence on the same day and were moved to the zoo’s aviary.

Plastic People Mattel is accepting pre-orders for the April 2010 release of the newest doll in the Barbie/Ken line, the spiffily dressed Palm Beach Sugar Daddy Ken (apparently to be showcased with a much younger, trophy-type Barbie). Even more troubling (but so far only a prototype) is Alex Green’s “Placenta Teddy Bear,” exhibited in London in September and Newcastle, England, in October at the “(re)design” showcase of “sustainable toys” with children’s themes. After the placenta is cured and dried, it is treated with an emulsifier to render it pliable and cut into strips with which to stitch Teddy together, thus “unify(ing)” mother and baby.