Along for the ride

A beekeeper’s country drive became more difficult when a box overturned, releasing 3,000 honeybees into the cab of his truck. Wallace Leatherwood said he had no intention of stopping, or even rolling down the windows, even though a swarm of bees was crawling around the inside of his truck in North Carolina on May 1. “I didn’t want to lose my bees,” Leatherwood told WLOS. “They were $165.” Leatherwood allowed the bees to swarm until he reached his home, more than 40 miles away in Waynesville, N.C. He says the insects mostly left him alone while he was driving his truck, but he received several stings while trying to remove the bees from the vehicle.

Decades on track

He may be 90, but Hershel McGriff can still burn rubber. The stock car racing legend started in his first race in 1945. On May 5, McGriff became the first nonagenarian to compete in a NASCAR event, racing in a regional race at the Tucson Speedway in Arizona. McGriff finished 18th with his son serving as his pit crew chief. NASCAR races have no age limit for competing, but drivers do have to pass a physical. McGriff last raced officially in 2012, but this year he added a flourish: The 90-year-old kicked off the event at Tucson Speedway by playing the national anthem on his trombone.

Doctor who?

One is an internationally famous hip-hop star and the other a Pennsylvania-based gynecologist. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office says Americans should be able to tell the difference. In May, the office ruled against Andre Young, known by the stage name Dr. Dre, in his trademark complaint against Pennsylvania doctor Draion M. Burch, who was seeking to trademark the name Dr. Drai. The patent office declared that American consumers wouldn’t confuse the rapper for the gynecologist.

Stuck on the road

A tractor trailer overturned on a highway in western Poland and released its sugary cargo. Twelve tons of liquid chocolate then oozed across both sides of the highway, halting traffic in both directions. As the chocolate cooled it began to harden, making cleanup efforts particularly difficult, according to Bogdan Kowalski of the fire brigade of the town of Slupca. “The cooling chocolate,” he said, “is worse than snow.” The driver of the tractor trailer had a broken arm, but nobody else was hurt in the May 9 accident.

An earie feeling

For nine days, Katie Holley of Melbourne, Fla., lived with a cockroach in her ear. Holley’s ordeal began April 14 when she woke up dizzy. “Thirty seconds later, stumbling to the bathroom, I knew,” Holley, 29, wrote in an essay published in Self magazine. “I knew there was something in my ear.” Swabbing her ear with a Q-tip revealed the insect’s legs. Holley’s husband tried to use tweezers to grasp the still-living Palmetto bug, but failed. In the emergency room, doctors removed sections of the 1.5-inch roach from Holley’s ear. For more than a week, Holley kept returning to the doctor to get more and more bits of the roach removed. According to Tampa General Hospital emergency medicine director Dr. David Wein, his hospital sees about 12 roach-in-ear cases each year.

Heavy lifting

It took a crane nine hours to complete the job, but five stray water buffalo were finally lifted off of a highway they were blocking in Germany. The buffalo had left a field and made their way to the highway near Leverkusen, shutting down traffic. Two trucks and several patrol cars corralled the large animals but couldn’t persuade them to exit the highway. Finally, a zoo vet tranquilized the animals, and police called in a fire crane that lifted the animals off of the highway and restored it for human use.

Slide rule

A New Jersey court is being asked to decide whether a baseball player can sue a coach for instructing him to slide. Former junior varsity baseball player Jake Maser has filed a lawsuit alleging that his ankle injury suffered during a game was due to negligence on the part of Bound Brook High School baseball coach John Suk. According to court filings, Maser was trying to leg out a triple after a hit to left center field when coach Suk instructed Maser to slide to avoid a tag. Maser’s cleat became stuck, and he suffered an ankle injury requiring surgery. On May 2, an appellate court instructed Judge Yolanda Ciccone to reconsider the case that she had dismissed earlier.

An inside job

Perhaps frustrated by the mechanical unreliability of the claw, a 3-year-old Illinois boy got himself trapped inside a vending machine. Palatine, Ill., firefighters were called to a laundromat to rescue the toddler on May 10 after he was discovered inside a claw crane machine filled with plush toys. According to firefighters, the boy likely got into the device by climbing through the prize door. Emergency workers removed panels on the game until a man was able to grab the boy and pull him to safety. The boy was unharmed, and even got to take home two plush toys.

Quiet, please

Parents of South Carolina seniors have been warned against loudly cheering their graduates at the school’s graduation ceremony. During an assembly, an administrator with Greenville High School projected a slide stating that graduation “is a dignified and solemn occasion, [and] graduating seniors and their guests should behave appropriately.” The administrator specifically asked for no cheering, whistling, or applauding. According to the presentation, those caught celebrating too loudly would be subject to a $1,030 fine. But both the Greenville, S.C., police and officials with the county school district said they would impose no such fines on cheering parents.