Quick Takes

Adam’s sin

Add driving without a license to Adam Jones’ rap sheet. Police arrested the Lincolnshire, U.K., resident in April after a reckless driving spree caused thousands of dollars of damage to parked cars in Grantham on a busy Friday night. In court on Sept. 17, Jones was found guilty of multiple driving offenses and sentenced to 12 months in jail. But before leaving the court, Jones admitted one other thing: He’s never really learned how to drive a real car, with his only experience being on video games. “Only learnt to drive on a PlayStation game,” Jones told the court, explaining that in the games, you simply drive as fast as you can without any care for the damage you cause or the people you injure.

Left out

An Oklahoma teacher is in hot water after forcing a 4-year-old pre-K student to use his right hand to practice making letters. Parents of an Oakes Elementary student in Okemah, Okla., say their child’s teacher sent home a letter after the September incident calling left-handedness evil and sinister. The parents saved the teacher’s note, which said, “There are numerous instances of left-handedness being associated with wickedness.” School Superintendent Tony Dean said the school has corrected the unnamed teacher’s behavior and now teachers will have to filter all letters home through the superintendent’s office.

Monkey business

An animal rights organization is going to San Francisco in its quest to find a federal judge willing to grant a monkey legal personhood. Lawyers for the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals filed a federal copyright suit on Sept. 21 asking the court to deem photographs taken by a macaque monkey in Indonesia to be the intellectual property of the selfie-taking monkey. In 2011, nature photographer David Slater allowed a macaque monkey named Naruto to play with his camera, resulting in a comical animal selfie photograph. Media outlets have since published the photograph without paying for use because, according to the U.S. Copyright Office, animals can’t hold copyrights. In the suit, PETA has asked the judge to award PETA the rights to collect copyright infringement damages on behalf of Naruto.

About face

When confronted with clear evidence against him, 34-year-old Steven Felton of Emmaus, Pa., got creative. In his trial for a string of 10 armed robberies that occurred in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley in the fall of 2012, Felton knew multiple security cameras caught his bare face and him holding a pellet gun and demanding money. Once caught, Felton claimed an “evil twin” had carried out the robberies. A jury didn’t buy it, convicting Felton in August of the crimes. And neither did a judge, who sentenced him to between 62 and 124 years in prison for what a district attorney called a “reign of terror.”

Designated trotter

Jake Williams may have been inebriated, but he had enough wit to stay out of the driver’s seat of his car. And yet, the Watson, La., resident still had to get home from the bar on Sept. 15. So instead of driving, Williams hopped on his horse Sugar who had been cooped up in a horse trailer attached to his truck. “When you get a little too much to drink, why not ride a horse?” he told WBRZ. “It’s safer that way. The horse knows the way home.” A local sheriff’s deputy noticed Williams on the way home and ticketed him for public intoxication—but not for driving while intoxicated.

They’re it?

To protect students from emotional torment and physical assault, the Mercer Island School District in Washington state has banned the childhood game of tag. Parents, who were informed by their children rather than the school district, are not happy. In an email, district communications director Mary Grady said, “Students are expected to keep their hands to themselves. The rationale behind this is to ensure the physical and emotional safety of all students.” But one parent told Seattle’s KCPQ that she’s upset because her children need unstructured playtime. “I totally survived tag,” Kelsey Joyce said. “I even survived red rover, believe it or not.”

Long lost bill

More than 40 years after the fact, Kent Broyhill can still be moved to honor his promises. In 1974, the then-student at the University of Nebraska tried to pay off his parking debts with a check shortly before graduation. When the officer told him the university only accepted cash, Broyhill promised to return with bills. In the hullabaloo surrounding graduation, Broyhill forgot about the tickets and was only reminded of them this year. So he sent $100 with a letter of explanation to the school’s Parking and Transit Services. Services director Dan Carpenter returned the money to Broyhill, excusing his debt, but saying the school had since destroyed the paper records of his infraction.

Hopping mad

An $80,000 repair job didn’t convince Langley, Wash., city officials to act on the city’s rabbit infestation, so the city’s school district may enlist help from above. Residents of Whidbey Island are noticing the ubiquitous rabbit feces, the destroyed plants, and hopping pests, and earlier this year, a rabbit infestation dug up a middle school’s football field, causing tens of thousands of dollars in damage. Still, Langley officials aren’t willing to begin trapping and euthanizing the pests. So, in September, school district officials met with a falconer about introducing birds of prey to the island to help restore balance.

Wedding heirloom

On Dec. 11, 1895, Mary Lowry Warren was married in Buffalo, N.Y. On Oct. 17, 2015, her great-great-granddaughter, Abigail Kingston, will be married in Perkasie, Pa.—and she’ll be wearing the same wedding dress. Kingston, 30, will be the 11th woman in the family to wear the dress for a wedding and the first since 1991. The dress had to be restored and altered to fit Kingston’s tall frame, and it remains so fragile that she’ll only wear it for the reception. Not every woman in the family has worn the dress; Kingston’s great-grandmother, a flapper who married in the 1920s, reportedly rejected wearing the elegant gown. Kingston, though, told the Associated Press that she loves the dress: “It feels like the Cinderella dress.”