Upscale cereal

Manhattanites with a hankering for cereal won’t need to rush home anymore. Cereal-maker Kellogg’s opened a restaurant in New York City on Broadway and 49th on July 4 featuring breakfast cereal. Customers can get normal bowls of cereal and milk for $4.50, choosing from Kellogg’s brands like Corn Flakes, Froot Loops, and Rice Krispies. Customers willing to pay $7.50 for a bowl can get a chef-designed cereal concoction.

Slimy hazard

A German driver lost control of his car on the autobahn June 29 after encountering an unusual road hazard. According to German police, the young driver ran over a large group of snails when entering a highway near Paderborn, Germany. Converting the snails to slime, his East German–made Trabant entered a skid, crashed into a guardrail, and flipped. Though many snails were killed in the accident, police reported that others oozed safely across the highway to the grass. The man walked away from the accident uninjured.

A burger a day ...

Getting burgers for life from Mr. Burger may not cost any money, but it does carry a price. The Melbourne, Australia, burger chain announced June 28 it would award free burgers for life to anyone who legally changed his or her last name to “Burger.” The name change must be legal by July 31. Winners will be entitled to one burger a day for the duration that they carry the last name Burger.

Easy rider

An itinerant cowboy from Montana was charged with trespass and impeding traffic after crossing the Outerbridge Crossing from New Jersey into Staten Island, N.Y., on June 27 on a horse. According to Port Authority Police, Tod Mishler, 80, ground traffic to a halt when he crossed the bridge riding one horse and leading another. Mishler told reporters he had been riding horses around the country for years and living in tents and motels in order to raise awareness about hunger.

Cat fight

A cat in a small Texas town near Dallas was on its way to tearing the community apart. For six years, Browser the cat has lived inside a White Settlement, Texas, library sidling up to customers, lounging on books, and theoretically keeping rodents away. But at a June 14 meeting, the town’s City Council voted to evict Browser and place the animal with a loving family. The town’s mayor, Ron White, called the council action petty: “[They] just went out and did this on their own because they don’t like cats.” Many citizens rallied to Browser’s defense, with more than 800 signing a petition to keep Browser at the library. On July 1 the City Council reversed itself, voting unanimously to allow Browser to live among the books.

Rodent roundup

A five-week hunt for a pair of missing rodents finally ended on June 28 near Toronto. On May 24, two capybaras escaped the staff of the High Park Zoo and fled into the nearby wilderness surrounding Grenadier Pond. The semiaquatic mammals native to South America are the largest rodents in the world, usually weighing in between 77 and 146 pounds. After numerous chance sightings from curious nearby homeowners, zoo workers used spring-loaded traps baited with corn and fruit to capture one of the runaway rodents on June 12 and nabbed the other just over two weeks later.

The queen’s Inglés

A Texas woman of Mexican descent claims that a recent jaw surgery has altered more than her face. When Lisa Alamia of Rosenberg, Texas, woke up from anesthesia from her January procedure, she began speaking with what her family calls a British accent. Doctors put the Houston-area woman through a battery of tests and recently diagnosed her with a rare neurological disorder called foreign accent syndrome. She says her family has accepted her new voice—mostly. “My daughter laughs at the way I say tamales,” she told KHOU. “I used to be able to say it like a real Hispanic girl. Now, I cannot.”

Midnight overcast

It’s called the Midnight Sun Baseball Game, but this year umpires in Fairbanks, Alaska, had to suspend the 111th annual event for an unusual reason: darkness. Normally the extreme northern latitude and summer solstice provide ample light for the game, which starts at 10:30 p.m. But this year, storm clouds on June 21 obscured the slowly setting sun enough that players were unable to see on the unlit field by the seventh inning.

One gaggle too many

What’s good for the goose in Montgomery County, Md., will be good for the local homeless. County park officials announced plans to round up more than 100 geese that have taken up residence in local parks, an effort to reduce overpopulation of the birds. County officials claim the excess geese have caused unsanitary conditions and have been resistant to non-lethal methods of control. A spokesman for the parks said an animal control contractor would round up the geese, and the birds will be butchered and donated to the Maryland Food Bank.