Backseat nondriver

Are all “occupants” created equal in Montreal? As she drove to pick up her son from school, Stephanie Emond says, a police officer pulled her over and wrote her a ticket for driving in the carpool—or high-occupancy vehicle—lane. After taking the $135 ticket, Emond said she pointed to her young daughter in the back seat. “[The officer] told me that the passenger needs to have a driver’s license,” Emond told the CBC. A transportation department spokesman later clarified that carpool lanes carried no age limits.

Raising the roof

Angered at a customer’s failure to pay, a Louisiana roofer repossessed the roof. Police say Andrew Higdon III of Monroe, La., performed a roofing project for a woman in June 2016. After waiting six months for payment, Higdon, according to police, removed the roofing tiles and roofing paper from the home when the homeowner was away. Police arrested Higdon on April 3 this year and charged him with criminal damage to property and trespass.

Finding Stephen

Police apprehended escaped convict Stephen Michael Paris with the help of the convict’s mother—but her unintentional help didn’t come until after she died. The key evidence was in her obituary, which listed a son named Stephen Chavez. Police investigated and found “Stephen Chavez” was an alias that Paris, 58, was using while living and working in Houston. Paris had escaped from the Jess Dunn Correctional Center in Muskogee, Okla., in 1981.

Out for a bite

A pair of camels that escaped a traveling circus in Bremen, Germany, on April 2 were apprehended at a nearby McDonald’s. Circus officials say the animals—including one large camel named “Ivan the Great”—slipped away and were only missing for 30 minutes. But that was enough time for the Bactrian, two-humped camels to wander into a grass field adjacent to a McDonald’s and begin chowing down on the grass. In February, a camel escaped from a different traveling circus in Limerick, Ireland, and was spotted by locals strolling through the drive-thru.

New smell in town

A small Alabama town of nearly 1,000 residents has a stinky problem. A company is storing nearly 10 million pounds of human waste at a rail yard in Parrish, Ala., causing residents to endure two months of bad odors. The problem started when nearby West Jefferson, Ala., filed for an injunction to prevent Big Sky Environment from making shipments of human waste through their town to a private landfill. The company acquired the biowaste from cities in New York and New Jersey. The injunction forced the company to ditch the train carrying the waste in Parrish. Mayor Heather Hall said she’s complained to Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey to no avail. “You can’t sit out on your porch,” Hall said. “Kids can’t go outside and play.”

Film negative

After a car crash in Palm Beach County, Fla., Xavier Moran reportedly told a sheriff’s deputy that footage from his dashboard camera would show another driver had cut him off. The footage reportedly showed more than the accident, though. It also allegedly showed Moran doing something a while before the accident: retrieving a baseball bat from his car and then breaking the glass door of a beauty store with the bat. Police proceeded to arrest him on burglary charges.

Mistaken identity

City dwellers in Manhattan phoned police on April 12 complaining of a tiger roaming the streets of the Washington Heights neighborhood. Simultaneously, New Yorkers posted warnings to social media to avoid 166th Street near Mitchel Square Park because of the big cat. After a quick investigation, police officials revealed that the suspicious animal was only a raccoon. New York Times reporter Christine Hauser reported on Twitter that, instead of saying hello, an NYPD spokesman answered the phone saying, “It’s not a tiger, it’s a raccoon.”

Lost and found

He went to bed March 20 with two slippers by his bedside and woke up with only one. To find the lost slipper, the unidentified elderly man in Queensland, Australia, called in a snake tracker who eventually discovered his lost slipper in the belly of a 10-foot python. Though the snake had slithered in and out of the man’s bedroom without incident, the shoe in its stomach was visible through its skin. The trackers took the python to veterinarian Josh Llinas, who was able to remove the footwear from the animal during major surgery. Llinas said he expects the snake to make a full recovery after weeks of rest.

Above and beyond

Anyone looking for a quiet, out-of-the-way spot to vacation will soon have another option. That is, provided they are fine with paying $9.5 million and going far out of the way. Space tourism company Orion Span announced plans for a luxury space station and hotel. According to company founder Frank Bunger, the spacecraft will allow four passengers and two crewmen to launch into space and orbit Earth for 12 days while aboard the company’s Aurora Station craft. In addition to the 16 or so visible sunrises every day, passengers will enjoy luxury accommodations for just under $10 million per passenger. Bunger said he hopes to take his first passengers in 2022.