Crappy job:Among issues in the months-long labor-management strife at the Taronga Zoo (Sydney, Australia): Workers have resisted managers’ alleged solution for getting Kibabu the gorilla to mate (following his rejection of all females for six years now), which was to have the keepers sedate him, stimulate him manually, and collect his sperm in a container (but that, said one keeper, would be “too bloody dangerous. What if he woke up?”). It now appears that zoo officials are resigned to use technology instead, by a process called electro- ejaculation. Earlier, workers had announced a partial strike for a 3 percent pay increase, in that they would stop picking up animals’ droppings (whereupon management began docking their pay of the “poo allowance” of the equivalent of U.S. $2.40 an hour.
Chutzpah! According to a September New York Times report, New York City homeless-shelter workers believe that “50 to 75 percent” of the current population of 8,000 families (2,000 more than the year before) are “unreasonably picky” about moving into permanent assisted housing, thus remaining in temporary apartments at an average cost to the city of $2,800 per family per month. Sara Kelly, a mother of six and eight-year assisted-housing client, said she could not accept a three-bedroom apartment because “you had to walk through one bedroom to get to another bedroom to get to a bathroom (and) I can’t live like that. (I am) choosy about where I live.”
In White River Junction, Vt., in October, Stewart Fuller, 41, was charged with looting about $30,000 worth of goods from the house of neighbors Roger and Shirley Labelle (who were away) and holding a three-day yard sale nearby so that when the Labelles returned, they couldn’t help but notice that some of their neighbors had their stuff.
Life Imitates a Rodney Dangerfield Joke: Herbert Toney, 36, and Latisha Washington, 29, were arrested in October in St. Bernard Parish, just outside New Orleans, and face several charges including deserting their 8-year-old son. According to police, the couple instructed the son to go into a Winn Dixie supermarket and steal groceries and beer. When a security guard stopped him, the boy pointed out his parents nearby, but Toney and Washington matter-of-factly denied knowing the kid and walked away. Deputies brought the couple in again a while later, but Washington said only that maybe she had seen the boy around the neighborhood a few times. Finally, she admitted he was hers.
People Different From Us: Suspected cult leader Scott Caruthers, 57, was arrested in September in Carroll County, Md., and charged with conspiracy to murder the ex-husbands of two of his alleged disciples; according to a Baltimore Sun report, Caruthers has claimed to be an alien who reported back to the mother ship by messages to cats.
Least Competent Criminals: Ronnie Dale Jones, 33, was arrested in Brevard, N.C., in September after he, for some reason, drove into a parking lot and past several police officers standing by their cars, talking; Jones apparently had momentarily forgotten he had a very large marijuana plant in his back seat. And a 22-year-old man was detained by a sheriff’s deputy in Gainesville, Fla., in October after he had been stopped routinely for an expired tag; as the men were conversing casually, the deputy noticed a rolled-up marijuana joint behind the man’s ear (to which the motorist said, “Man, I forgot that was back there”).
Multitasking Gone Too Far: In Tucson, Ariz., in August, Iris Jazmin Rangel, 24, was sentenced to three years’ probation in the death of her 10-month-old daughter in a minor collision caused by Rangel’s inability to brake quickly enough; her attention was diverted because she was breastfeeding the girl at the time. And South Carolina Highway Patrol officers said in July that Marie Butler, 20, triggered a five-car collision on State Road 90, sending three people to the hospital, when she lost control of her car while changing clothes during her drive to work.
Also, in the Last Month: The North Korean government gave its top yearly science prize to Pyongyang Hospital for developing a rhubarb-and-marijuana concoction that is “97 percent effective” in curing constipation. Adele Robinson and several other New York City public-school contract teachers were mailed checks for 1 cent to correct a calculation error on summer-class pay.
Send your Weird News to newsweird@aol.com, or go to www.newsoftheweird.com.
2002 CHUCK SHEPHERD
This article appears in Nov 20-26, 2002.
