Beast of burdens

Someone named Oliver was on hand at Montana State University during finals week this year to offer succor to stressed-out students. Or, you might say, on hoof. Oliver, a 900-pound, brown-and-white therapy donkey, visited the campus on May 2, giving students a free opportunity to pet or hug their troubles away. Intermountain Therapy Animals, which manages Oliver, also brought dogs to the school for finals-week stress relief, reported the Bozeman Daily Chronicle.

Pint for your pain

In a discovery that’s bound to have bar patrons toasting their success, researchers in the United Kingdom have discovered that beer works better at killing pain than acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol. Writing recently in The Journal of Pain, study co-author Trevor Thompson of the University of Greenwich found that consuming three or four regular drinks diminishes pain by 25 percent. The analgesic effect, Thompson and his colleagues admitted, could potentially contribute to “alcohol misuse in pain patients.”

Dubious defense

A Missouri man has struck out on a religious liberty argument after trying to convince a federal appeals court that prosecuting him for heroin distribution infringed on his religious rights. In 2013 Timothy Anderson was tried and convicted in a federal court in St. Louis for distributing the opioid and sentenced to 27 years in prison. On April 26, the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals tossed out his claim that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act protected his heroin trafficking—a decision affirming the government’s right to prohibit the drug trade.

Pilfered pimento

Joel Puglia of Rock Hill, S.C., severely overestimated the hospitality of his next-door neighbor. Police say the neighbor called to complain that Puglia, 55, had once again broken into his home and helped himself to the fridge. The neighbor had installed a motion-activated camera in his kitchen after becoming suspicious of Puglia. The April 29 video purportedly reveals Puglia taking a swig of moonshine, two slices of bread, a lump of pimento cheese, and a dill pickle spear. Police charged him with burglary and petit larceny.

Faked friends

Police in China have arrested a man for faking his own wedding party. The groom, identified in Chinese media accounts simply as Mr. Wang, has been accused of hiring actors to pose as his 200 invited family and guests at his wedding. Bride-to-be Xiao Liu explained that the two had never lived in the same city, and therefore she was not initially suspicious of the fake friends. But Wang’s plan fell apart when the actors could not explain how they knew the groom and later admitted to being paid about $12 per person to attend. Local sources revealed neither a motive for the ruse nor a reason why this particular fraud warranted police intervention.

Don’t try this

Frustrated by long waits in his nation’s universal healthcare system, New Zealand resident John Griffin decided to try a home remedy for his heart condition. Griffin waited two hours at an emergency room on April 2 seeking treatment for an irregular heartbeat, then was told he would have to wait six more hours. Exasperated, the 69-year-old left for home. Once there, he noticed his neighbor’s 8,000-volt electric fence. Griffin figured the electric shock from the fence probably wouldn’t be so different from the defibrillator shock he had been waiting for. So he touched the fence. “It gave me a decent belt and [my heart] came right,” Griffin told The New Zealand Herald.

Sheep at sea

Sailing in heavy fog, a Russian spy ship was sunk on April 27—by a livestock freighter. Despite carrying sophisticated instruments and eavesdropping devices, the Russian vessel Liman, sailing in the Black Sea off the coast of Turkey, didn’t notice it was on a collision course with a Togo-flagged ship carrying 8,800 sheep. According to the Russian Defense Ministry, the collision breached the 240-foot ship below the water line. Although the Russian ship sank, all 78 crew members were safely evacuated.

Fowl in Florida

For many folks in Miami, a large and growing flock of beautiful but invasive peacocks is producing some ugly problems. According to an April report in the Miami Herald, the peafowl, introduced by residents as lawn ornamentation years ago, have no natural predators in South Florida and consequently have wildly proliferated. The result: voluminous peacock waste, cacophonous squawking, and car fenders ruined by pecking. “Everyone’s heart is in the right place,” Zoo Miami spokesman Ron Magill told the Herald. “But even the most passionate animal lover will lose his patience when he slips and falls in peacock feces.”

No extra credit

A creative but regrettable class assignment prompted a Catholic university in St. Louis to go on lockdown for several hours on May 3. After an engineering class at Saint Louis University assigned students to make toy rubber band guns as part of their coursework, one pupil built a gun so realistic that someone on campus called security, alerting them of a man with a firearm, prompting the lockdown. Once administrators and police sorted out the confusion, the university said the remaining rubber band guns would be destroyed. “This is the first time toy guns have been made in this class,” the school stated, “and it will be the last.”