Quick Takes

Biggest pet on the block

A rare domesticated and housebroken bison sold for $5,960 on Craigslist. The seller, Karen Schoeve of Argyle, Texas, transported the massive beast to a family in Flower Mound, Texas, outside of Dallas on May 14. According to Schoeve, the bison called Bullet has a great personality and roamed her house with impunity. Besides tracking mud in, Schoeve said, she had no problems with the domesticated Bullet.

Life after death

When Chuck Zellers noticed something unusual with his Social Security payment back in March, he phoned a government office looking for answers. The call may have surprised the government worker he contacted, considering the U.S. government listed the Nebraska man as deceased. “Oh, by golly, you are dead,” the Social Security Administration clerk told the very-much-alive Zellers. “She told me it could be a funeral home declared [me] dead; or that someone just put in a wrong keystroke or something like that,” he said. Zellers spent weeks appearing in person at government agencies before officials finally designated Zellers as “alive” in May.

Questions questioned

What alcoholic drinks do 14- and 15-year-olds prefer? That was a question millions of students in the United Kingdom faced when they took a standardized biology test on May 17. The remainder of the General Certificate of Secondary Education biology exam contained similar off-topic questions, such as one asking students to define what an independent company is and another about an obscure research study on drunk rats. An uproar over the unusual questions spilled over to Twitter where more than 100,000 students weighed in. The company that created the test defended the questions, saying the subject matter appeared on the syllabus.

Weight training

Among the many ways the Chicago Bears would like rookie draft pick Leonard Floyd to prepare for his first NFL season, only one requires alarms on his phone. “I’ve got prompts set up on my phone [multiple] times in the day that I’m supposed to eat,” the No. 9 pick in the 2016 NFL Draft told CSN Chicago. Floyd said team officials weren’t specific about the menu or about the types of food the 6-foot-4, 220-pound linebacker should eat, “as long as I eat a lot of it.”

Tomato explosion

The Australian government has warned grocery shoppers across the Outback to beware of an explosive batch of canned tomatoes. On May 13, canning company SPC Ardmona announced it was pulling some of its canned tomatoes from supermarket shelves in Australia because a packaging defect made the cans susceptible to exploding upon opening. The Australian government quickly stepped in with an official product recall.

Caught with the kids

A Colorado baby sitter’s alleged bank robbery plan turned out as audacious as it was ill-conceived. Police say 28-year-old Rachel Einspahr on May 13 loaded her two young baby-sitting charges in her Nissan SUV and went to the drive-thru of the Colorado East Bank & Trust in Severance, Colo. There, she allegedly passed a note through the pneumatic tube to a teller saying that a man in her car was threatening the children unless the bank gave her money. The teller dutifully handed out $500 and then called police. Authorities found Einspahr and her vehicle a short time later just blocks from the bank.

Antique flak

Perhaps stricken by a berserker rage at a medieval festival, a Middle Ages re-enactor felled a drone from the sky using a spear. The incident occurred during Rusborg 2016, a Russian Middle Ages festival that ended on May 9. According to witnesses, a drone pilot was using a quadcopter to buzz actors just before a battle scene when one of the participants took exception to the 21st-century technology. The actor took down the drone with one heave but later promised the pilot to pay for the damage.

Catty couple

For some, the thought of being married in front of more than a thousand feline celebrants would be a nightmare. But for Louise Veronneau and her new husband Dominic Husson, it was the wedding of their dreams. The Canadian couple traveled to the largest no-kill cat sanctuary in North America, outside of Fresno, Calif., for their nuptials in May after three years of dating. Shelter founder Lynea Lattanzio became ordained so she could officiate the event for the couple and an audience composed of 1,100 cats and an unreported number of human spectators.

Here comes the sun

Unusual weather racked London’s mass transit system on May 13 causing disruptive delays across the system. The problem in the famously cloudy nation? Too much sun. According to London Underground officials, above-ground trains depend on CCTV monitors to pull away safely from train platforms. But “excess sunlight” prevented conductors from seeing the monitors, forcing them to wait for platform staff to give the all-clear.