Dateline: EnglandPolice in the market town of Evasham in Worcestershire say a “drunk” squirrel ransacked a club when it became locked in overnight. “At first we thought we’d been burgled,” Honeybourne Railway Club branch secretary Sam Boulter told Worcester News. “But I realized it was all still locked up, and that’s when we saw the squirrel.” According to Boulter, “bottles were scattered around, money scattered around, and he’d obviously run across the bar’s pumps.” Beer was overflowing from the bar’s trays and onto the floor, leading Boulter to speculate that the furry intruder had “flung himself” on the bar’s beer taps. The perpetrator was described as “staggering around all over the place and moving a bit slowly.” Boulter told the BBC, “I’ve never seen a drunk squirrel before. He was sozzled and looked a bit worse for wear, shall we say.” According to Boulter, the club “lost about 300 pounds ($632) worth of stock, but it is just one of those once-in-a-lifetime things—I hope!” It took Boulter and two customers an hour to capture the intoxicated squirrel in a waste paper basket. It was eventually released into a field outside the club.Dateline: KentuckyThe Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in Kentucky has ruled that butt dialers have no right to privacy. According to Courthouse News Service, former chairman of the Kenton County Airport Board James Huff sued an executive assistant at the Cincinnati/ Northern Kentucky International Airport after she recorded a conversation about board matters. Huff was in Italy at the time conversing with board vice chairman Larry Savage on a hotel balcony. Unfortunately, while the two discussed the possibility of replacing then-CEO Candace McGraw, Huff accidentally pocket dialed executive assistant Carol Spaw. Realizing the two men were conspiring to “discriminate unlawfully against McGraw,” Spaw recorded a portion of the 91-minute conversation with her iPhone and reported it “through appropriate channels.” A three-judge panel determined an individual on the receiving end of a “butt” or “pocket” dial call does not violate privacy laws by recording it. In writing up the decision, Judge Danny Boggs blamed the phone owner, noting, “if a homeowner neglects to cover a window with drapes, he would lose this reasonable expectation of privacy with respect to a viewer looking into the window from outside his property.” Huff admitted to having butt dialed in the past, and Judge Boggs faulted him for failing to employ any of several known methods for preventing the error, such as “locking the phone, setting up a passcode, and using one of many downloadable applications that prevent pocket-dial calls.” Dateline: IowaA “knee-deep” pile of mayflies blocked traffic and prompted the closing of a bridge connecting Sabula, Iowa, with Savanna, Ill. Thousands of mayflies began swarming the bridge on the night of Saturday, July 24. The swarm got so thick that motorcycles lost traction on the road. Sabula Police Department Reserve Officer Stephen Thayer told reporters the Iowa Department of Transportation eventually had to come in “with a snowplow and actually plow them off and then sand it because it was still pretty slippery. And then Illinois plowed their side.” The Iowa DOT said the lights on the bridge will be kept off during the next few weeks to discourage the insects from gathering.Dateline: WashingtonA fugitive bank robber was arrested after he became a movie star. U.S. Marshals Service in Seattle spotted Jason Strange’s picture in the Olympian newspaper’s feature last week about a low-budget horror movie. The film, titled Marla Mae, stars Strange as an “evil physician” who targets the title character. Strange was sentenced to nearly 10 years in prison and five years supervised release in 2006 after pleading guilty to armed bank robbery. He was freed on supervised release in 2014 but walked away from a halfway house in Spokane. Officers with the Marshals Service have been looking for Strange for several months. They were able to easily identify him from his photo in the paper, thanks to a unique arm tattoo. Marshals tracked him from a filming location in Olympia and arrested him without incident. “We didn’t know he was a criminal,” producer Brandon Roberts said. “He did a good job.”
Compiled by Devin D. O'Leary. Email your weird news to devin@alibi.com.
