News of the Weird: Week of May 15, 2025

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Seen It All

Police in Akron, Ohio, caught bodycam video of a bandit behind the wheel with a meth pipe in his mouth during a traffic stop on May 5. But Chewy, the bandit in question, did not face arrest, because Chewy is a pet raccoon. WLWT 5 reported that as the driver of the vehicle, Victoria Vidal, 55, was detained for having an active warrant and driving with a suspended license, officers returned to Vidal's vehicle to find Chewy in the driver's seat with the drug paraphernalia. "While our officers are trained to expect the unexpected, finding a raccoon holding a meth pipe is a first!" the Springfield Township Police Department said in a Facebook post, adding, "No raccoons were hurt or injured in this incident."

Sweet Tooth

Holly LaFavers of Lexington, Kentucky, tried to cancel an Amazon order placed by her second grader son, Liam, over the weekend, but it was too late; when the pair arrived home on May 5, WKYT reported, Liam yelled, "My suckers are here!" and LaFavers was greeted by 22 large cases of Dum-Dums lollipops lining her front porch. Liam, who placed the order while entertaining himself with his mother's phone, actually had ordered 30 cases -- each containing 2,340 lollipops, for a total cost of more than $4,000 -- but eight of the cases wouldn't scan and were returned to sender. "He told me that he wanted to have a carnival," LaFavers said, "and he was ordering the Dum-Dums as prizes for his carnival." Amazon fully refunded the order, and LaFavers vowed to change the access settings on her phone.

Joyride

A stray bull in Rishikesh, Uttarakhand, India, became an internet sensation when CCTV caught the bold bovine taking a spontaneous ride on a motorized scooter. In the video, which was posted on X and reported on by NDTV, the bull casually strolled down a street before taking an interest in a parked scooter. As a prescient mother scooped up her child and ducked out of harm's way, the bull hopped onto the scooter with its front legs, somehow perfectly balancing the scooter and setting it in motion. The ride covered about 50 feet before the scooter fell over and the bull nonchalantly walked away. One user on X summed it up: "No one would believe if it wasn't captured by CCTV."

You Again?

Rescues are not uncommon on Mount Fuji, but one climber may have used up all the good will of the Shizouka prefectural police, who were called to save the man near the mountain's peak twice in a span of four days. The imprudent adventurer, a 27-year-old Chinese student living in Japan, began suffering from altitude sickness and was airlifted to safety after calling authorities on April 22; the Associated Press reported that he returned to the mountain on April 26 "to look for his cellphone and other belongings left behind," according to police. When another climber found him suffering altitude sickness and unable to move, authorities were called in to rescue him once again. There is no penalty for climbing Mount Fuji during the offseason, and no charge associated with being rescued -- even twice in the same week.

Lay Off Me, I'm Starving

Anyone familiar with A.A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh stories knows bears love honey and will go to great lengths for the sweet stuff. So it's not exactly surprising that Jeff Bonner of Bazetta, Ohio, recently caught a bear on the motion-activated cameras he had set up to protect his apiary. What was surprising, Bonner told WFMJ-TV, was what little remained in the aftermath of the bear's late-night snack attack. "He ate the frame, the wax that was there, and the bees," Bonner said. "He literally ate a whole hive of bees." Bonner estimated the hive had held some 10,000-50,000 bees. He expects the bear to return to the newly found food source, and the Ohio Department of Natural Resources recommended that he increase the apiary's security with more cameras and an electric fence.

That's a First

Team members at New Zealand's department of conservation recently bore witness for the first time ever to the egg-laying process of Powelliphanta augusta, a large, carnivorous, hermaphrodite snail that mates and lays eggs through a hole in its neck. Ingrid Gruner, the department's regional biodiversity liaison, told the Guardian that the team had "struck lucky" when video taken during a routine weight check of one of the snails captured the moment the small white egg emerged. "In all the years we've been doing that

She Has the High Ground

A judge in London, England, recently awarded Lorna Rooke, former training and practice supervisor for the National Health Service's Blood and Transplant division, a whopping $38,729 for being compared to Darth Vader, the Guardian reported on May 7. In 2021, Rooke and her co-workers were asked to participate in a team-building exercise featuring a "Star Wars"-themed questionnaire that would reveal which character from the sci-fi fantasy franchise their personality most resembled. Rooke didn't participate but found out later that co-workers had filled it out for her, and the result came up Sith lord. Though the quiz described Vader as a "very focused individual," Rooke called the comparison "highly unflattering" and said it made her "super unpopular" around the office, leading her to resign a month later.

Taking It For the Team

In an effort to build up an immunity to the venom of lethal snakes, herpetologist Tim Friede, 57, of Wisconsin, allowed himself to be bitten over 200 times and self-administered more than 650 venom injections over 18 years while steadfastly documenting the effects, The New York Times reported on May 2. Now, as described in a study published in the journal Cell last week, scientists have used the unique antibodies in Friede's blood to create a drug that fully protected mice from the venom of 13 deadly snake species. Researchers hope Friede's work (and blood) will lead to the creation of a universal anti-venom. "I'm really proud that I can do something in life for humanity," Friede told the Times.

Trouble Brewing

ChatGPT can perform many impressive tasks -- sometimes with amusing results -- but it may need to stay out of tasseography. Greek City Times reported on April 26 that a Greek woman recently filed for divorce from her husband after the OpenAI chatbot asserted that the man was having an affair and that his mistress was intent on destroying their home, a conclusion the bot came to upon "reading" the coffee grounds in the couple's mugs in a photo the woman uploaded to the app. "I laughed it off as nonsense," the husband said, "but she took it seriously. She asked me to leave, told our kids we were getting divorced, and then I got a call from a lawyer. That's when I realized this wasn't just a phase." The husband's lawyer maintains that ChatGPT's claims have no legal standing.

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