Quick Takes

Duck driver

Searching for a fare, Canadian cab driver Urga Adunga decided to give a mother duck and her nine ducklings a freebie. The Checker Cab driver found the animals stalling traffic on June 11 on a busy Calgary, Alberta, street. “I didn’t want to pass them because there is no way for them to escape from the road,” he told the CBC. Instead, Adunga flipped on his hazard lights, rounded up the ducks, placed them in his backseat and drove them to the nearest river. Adunga says he waived the $17 fare.

Costly typo

A proofreading error will cost a suburban Philadelphia county more than $4,000. Months ago, Montgomery County, Pa., workers placed throughout the county 26 welcome signs listing the county website and the names of the three county commissioners. Unfortunately for the county, the word “commissioner” contained only one “m” on the signs. After a county employee noticed the error, officials decided to pay about $4,000 for adhesive labels to cover the typo.

Bird’s-eye view

Adopting a better-safe-than-sorry attitude, Indian police officials in May trapped a pigeon seen flying over a village near the nation’s heavily militarized border with Pakistan because they thought the bird might be a spy. Upon inspection, X-rays revealed markings in Urdu, a script common to the border region between the two nations. But unlike a dead falcon fitted with a small camera discovered in Punjab in 2013, no espionage devices were found on the captured pigeon.

Sleeping on the job

An Alabama thief probably wishes he had caught a nap before a recent robbery. Police in Red Bay, Ala., say Christopher Trail allegedly took hostages when he stormed into the Redmont Pharmacy in the small Alabama town at 8:30 a.m. on June 9. According to witnesses, Trail, armed with a shotgun, took four employees and one customer hostage as he demanded drugs from pharmacist Donna Weatherford. Eventually, Weatherford convinced Trail to let the four other hostages go, and she would gather the pills herself. But while Weatherford was working, a weary Trail decided to put two chairs together and take a quick nap. While the man was asleep, Weatherford grabbed the shotgun and fled outside. Police then took Trail into custody.

Lizard surprise

When the plumber screamed, Marian Lindquist knew there must be a problem. Lindquist hired a plumber on June 7 to fix a clogged toilet in her family home in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. When the plumber finally cleared the blockage and retrieved her auger something surprising came up: an 18-inch iguana. “I’ve never seen anything like this before,” said Alisa Scott, a 12-year veteran at Roto-Rooter. “This is the first time I pulled something like that out of a toilet.” According to Scott, the iguana probably got into the home’s plumbing system after crawling through a roof vent. In order to prevent a second occurrence, Lindquist’s 17-year-old daughter immediately took it upon herself to seal off all rooftop vents.

Washed out

Nine graffiti artists have filed a lawsuit against a Brooklyn building owner after he whitewashed their tags from the face of his buildings. The plaintiffs—from New York, London, and elsewhere—filed their lawsuit in federal court June 12 alleging building owner Jerry Wolkoff violated the U.S. Visual Artists Rights Act when he covered their graffiti without giving them the chance to retrieve their work. Graffiti artists have been tagging buildings in the neighborhood since 1993 when Wolkoff gave permission to artists to paint his buildings.

Swarmed sedan

A driver near Missoula, Mont., on May 22 had some unruly passengers who were distracting him—thousands of them. The unidentified driver was transporting five hives of Russian honeybees inside the cabin of his red sedan. Montana Highway Patrol officers pulled him over, and the driver explained his erratic driving by saying the hives had fallen over causing thousands of bees to swarm all around the cabin of the car. The officers issued the driver a reckless driving citation but nothing more: A call to the state apiarist found that while the motorist’s unorthodox method of transporting bees was manifestly unsafe, he didn’t need a permit to do it.

No-go zone

Postal workers in Norbury, U.K., near London are officially refusing to deliver mail down one of the town’s streets. The problem: a major rat infestation. Businesses and residents whose mail is delivered along the infested side street received word June 5 that the Royal Mail would not deliver until the street had been cleared of garbage and decomposing food. An anonymous local resident told the Croydon Guardian, “It’s a plague there” with rats “the size of kittens.”

No service

On June 15 the Beaver Dam, Wis., Common Council voted 14-0 to narrow the definition of service animals within city limits to dogs and mini horses. The reason: a February incident in which police responding to a call found Diana Moyer at a local McDonald’s toting a baby kangaroo wrapped in a blanket and placed in an infant seat. She claimed the kangaroo was a service animal that helped her cope with emotional distress. Now, if the woman goes out again with her kangaroo, police may issue a citation.