FT262

GHOST VIGILANTE
When the owner of a grocery shop in Kampung Binjai, Malaysia, visited his shop with his wife from their hometown in Kota Baru after celebrating a religious festival, they found a dehydrated intruder lying in a room. They called an ambulance to take him to hospital. The 36-year-old would-be burglar later told police that after entering the shop he was blinded and felt he was in a cave. “Each time I wanted to flee,” he said, “I felt a ‘supernatural figure’ shoving me to the ground.” He was trapped for 72 hours without food and water. The Star (Malaysia), 13 Dec 2008.

WHALE FUNERAL
Nearly 10,000 Vietnamese fishermen and their kinfolk converged in Bac Lieu province in late February to give a 15-ton, 16m whale a royal send-off. They burned incense and planned to build a temple at the site of his burial at the mouth of the Cai Cung River. Whales are considered sacred in Vietnam’s fishing culture and are referred to by the title ngai (Your Excellency), the same honorific used for kings, emperors and other esteemed leaders. Independent, 27 Feb 2010.

RAPTURE SERVICE
An outfit called Post Rapture Pet Care (PRPC) offers to look after the pets of fundamentalist Christians in Britain after they are taken up to Heaven in the Rapture. Run by atheists (who will obviously be left behind), it offers ‘peace of mind’ for just £69.99. The US equivalent is Eternal Earth-Bound Pets, whose clients pay USD 110 for a 10-year contract. Psychic News, 27 Feb 2010.

JELLYFISH SINK TRAWLER
A 10-ton Japanese trawler, the Diasan Shinsho-maru, was sunk by giant jellyfish off Chiba in eastern Japan. It capsized as the three-man crew tried to haul in a net containing dozens of Nomura’s jellyfish (Stomolophus nomurai), which can weigh up to 200kg and measure up to 2m in diameter. Another trawler rescued the crew. D.Telegraph, 2 Nov 2009.

NARROW ESCAPE
A call of nature saved Beata Goenzc, nine, from being zapped in her bed by lightning. While she was in the lavatory, a bolt shot through her home in Kisbarapati, Hungary, and “turned her metal-framed bed into dust”. Metro, 6 July 2009.

BRONX GOATS
On 10 October 2009, a ranger in Pelham Bay Park in the Bronx, New York, found a two-year-old goat, suffering from pneumonia and mutilated ears. Two baby goats were found in July in the same Bronx area, and in early September, another sickly goat was found wandering the grounds of a nearby nursing home, and died shortly afterwards. “We don’t know where they are coming from,” said a spokesman for New York Animal Care and Control. NY Daily News, 14 Oct 2009.

WORLD FIRST
A reptile zoo in Gowran, Co. Kilkenny, Ireland, has reported the first case of parthenogenesis (asexual reproduction) in a Nile Monitor lizard. Curator James Hennessy said: “There have been two cases of parthenogenesis recorded in Komodo Dragons – a different species of Monitor lizard found only in Indonesia – but never in Nile Monitor species from Africa, so this is a first in the world.” The lizard, which had never been in contact with a male, laid a number of eggs, two of which hatched. Irish Times, 1 July 2009.

PI MAN
The first general computer, the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer, calculated pi to more than 2,000 digits in 1949 and in 2005 a Chinese student, Lu Chao, memorised and recited pi to 67,890 digits, without making a mistake. Independent, 8 Jan 2010.

CANNY PUSSY
A cat that stumbled into a Fife rescue centre with its head wedged in an empty pet food tin left staff wondering how it reached them without being knocked down – and why it came to such an appropriate place. The female cat walked into the Scottish SSPCA’s Wildlife Rescue Centre in Middlebank on 14 February. The tin can was removed and the cat placed in a rehoming centre in Edinburgh. BBC News, 16 Feb 2010.

CULT SACRIFICE
The remains of more than 400 animals, including deer and turtles, were discovered at a house in the Feltonville neighbourhood of Phila­delphia, Pennsylvania, on 30 December. The animals had apparently been used in some kind of religious ritual. The police were trying to find the people who rented the house. [AP] 1 Jan 2010.

KING RAT-CATCHER
Bangladeshi poultry farmer Mokhairul Islam, 40, won a TV set for killing 83,450 rats over nine months in Gazipur, near the capital, Dhaka, mainly with poison. He collected their tails for proof. “I am so happy to get this honour,” he said. “I had no idea the government gives prizes for this.” Rats eat up to two million tons of crops in Bangladesh every year. [AP] 1 Oct 2009.

FACE OFF
Hugo Hernandez, 36, was kidnapped in Sonora state, Mexico, on 2 January. His face was flayed from his skull and sewn on a football, which was left in a plastic bag outside Los Mochis city hall with the message: “Happy New Year, because this will be your last”. It was thought to be a warning to the Juarez drug cartel. The rest of Hernandez’s body was cut into six pieces and left elsewhere. (Sydney) Sunday Tele­graph, 10 Jan; Metro, 11 Jan 2010.

FATAL PASSION
A love-struck seven-point buck, weighing about 82kg was killed when it sparred with a 290kg concrete statue of an elk in the backyard of Mark and Carol Brye in Viroqua, Wisconsin. They found the statue on its side and the dead buck 6m away, its skull shatt­ered. Lacrosse (WI) Tribune, 10 Nov 2009.

DON’T BOAST
Despite having served for years as a distinguished Pakistani diplomat, Akbar Zeb has been rejected as ambassador to Saudi Arabia because his name equates to “Biggest Dick” in Arabic. Pakistan had previously floated his name as ambassador to the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, only to have him rejected for the same reason. You would think they would take a hint, wouldn’t you? Arab Times, via Foreign Policy Magazine, 8 Feb 2010.

IRISH FISH FALL
FT’s correspondent Allen Foster has unearthed the follow­ing vintage report from Ireland. During a thunder­storm on 29 May 1928, dozens of small reddish fish, about 5cm long, fell on the roof of a bungalow at the farm of Mr James McMaster in Drumhirk, near Comber, Co. Down. The nearest open water was Strangford Lough, about two miles away. Irish Times, 30 May 1928.

WALKING BACKWARDS
Ten days after a swine flu jab, Desiree Jennings, 25, from Virginia, was left virtually paralysed. Walking was painful as muscle spasms made her twist and jerk before collapsing. However, the symptoms disappeared when she ran or walked backwards. She has been diagnosed with the rare neurological condition dys­tonia. Sun, 21 Oct 2009.

PINK SNOW
On 31 December, the roofs of seven houses in the Hilltown neighbourhood of Phila­delphia, Pennsylvania – as well as surrounding grass and woodland – were covered with pink snow. It had no odour or oily texture. It was apparently something called ‘watermelon snow’, coloured by Chlamydomonas nivalis algæ, or snow algæ, which have a red carotenoid pigment. Watermelon snow has puzzled mountain climbers and naturalists for centuries. phillyBurbs.com (Phila­delphia, PA), 1 Jan 2010.