Quick Takes

Breakfast brew

A craft brewer in Ft. Collins, Colo., left several shoppers agitated when he purchased the entire stock of Count Chocula cereal from two Albertson’s supermarket stores in early October. According to Steve Marrick, the general manager of Black Bottle Brewery, he needed the boxes of cereal for his brewery’s next installment in its “Cerealiously” beer series. The line of brews turns popular cereal brands into beer. The brewery has featured beers made with Golden Grahams, Reese’s Puffs, and Cinnamon Toast Crunch. Marrick says he was preparing the Count Chocula beer for Halloween.

Protect and serve

Police responding to an 11-year-old’s call for help ended up doing their work, and the schoolboy’s homework as well. The unnamed Stockholm boy phoned police on Oct. 17 when he heard suspicious noises while home alone doing his homework. Police quickly secured the home and had the boy call his mother. After learning his parents would not be home for a while, the officers volunteered to stay with the boy and help him finish his multiplication tables.

Good gourd

A Californian has grown the largest pumpkin ever in North America. At the Half Moon Bay Pumpkin Festival on Oct. 13, John Hawkley’s massive gourd weighed in at 2,058 pounds, only 42 pounds short of a world record, but good for $13,348 in prize money. Shortly after the weigh-in, Hawkley planned to fly his pumpkin to New York for display alongside other massive pumpkins at the city’s Botanical Garden.

Neighborhood jog

A trio of top contenders in the Bangalore (India) Marathon found themselves off track when a guide car missed a turn and led the runners 2.5 miles in the wrong direction. The runners discovered the mistake, which occurred about 9 miles into the 13.1-mile half marathon, only when the race crowd thinned and they realized they were simply jogging through a Bangalore neighborhood. Hopelessly behind and with no chance to win, the runners borrowed money from bystanders to buy train tickets to the finish line where they received apologies from event organizers.

Ear assault

While riding a bus home from a bar in Mankato, Minn., in the early morning hours of Oct. 18, Riley Swearingen approached a uniformed police officer from behind, licked a finger on both hands, and inserted them into the cop’s ears. The officer’s response to getting a double wet Willy was as swift as it was stern. The unnamed officer immediately placed Swearingen, an on-leave Air Force airman, under arrest and hauled him to the police station, charging the 24-year-old North Carolinian with felony assault on a police officer with bodily fluids. At a hearing on Oct. 20, Swearingen pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of misdemeanor disruptive intoxication, which carries a penalty of three days in jail. “I thought it would be incredibly funny to give a police officer a wet Willy, to which I was sorely mistaken,” Swearingen explained to the judge. “I’m incredibly sorry for what I did.”

Grass infraction

Officials in Lenoir City, Tenn., jailed a woman who refused to mow her lawn. On June 13, code enforcement officers cited Karen Holloway for failing to keep her front lawn properly maintained. According to Holloway, her grass was overgrown and her bushes unruly when she received the citation. “With my husband going to school and working full time, me with my job, with one vehicle, we were trying our best,” she explained to WVLT. However, on Oct. 14 when she appeared before a judge to confess she hadn’t cut the grass since the June violation, she was stunned by the ruling. Municipal court Judge Terry Vann sentenced Holloway to five days in jail—later reducing it to just six hours. Vann also scheduled a follow-up hearing in November during which he promises to deliver more jail time if Holloway doesn’t get her lawn mowed.

Buried treasure

A Seattle woman’s family accidentally threw away her life savings when they took an old VCR machine to a local high school for a recycling drive in July. According to Todd Hwang, his mother had stored $6,000 in a bag stuffed into the tape slot of a VCR that had been collecting dust for years. The mother discovered her life savings missing later that day when she returned home from work. The woman and her adult daughter went to the recycling center early the next Monday to begin searching for the lost money. Together with the employees at 1 Green Planet recycling center, the Hwangs dug through more than 12 tons of junk, finally discovering the money-laden VCR at the bottom of the final bin.

Attorney privilege

An Alabama man who settled a police brutality lawsuit with the city of Birmingham, Ala., will get just $1,000 of the $460,000 settlement. Lawyers for Anthony Warren will collect the remaining $459,000. The case stemmed from a 2008 incident in which Warren led Birmingham police in a high-speed car chase that ended in officers beating him. Warren is currently serving a 20-year prison term for severely injuring an officer by running over him during the chase. According to the Oct. 21 settlement, attorneys Wendy Brooks Crew, Alyson Hood Rains, and Cameron Hogan charged $100,000 in expenses and $359,000 in fees for litigating the case, leaving Warren with only 0.22 percent of the award.

No R word

There’s one thing Madeline Scotto didn’t wish for on her 100th birthday: retirement. Despite becoming a centenarian on Oct. 16, the 100-year-old Brooklyn woman still works as a teacher at the St. Ephrem School where she prepares middle-school students for math competitions. When asked about retiring after six decades at St. Ephrem, Scotto told WPIX: “Oh, that’s a bad word. I don’t ever want to hear that word.” Her commute is easy enough: just a walk across the street. “Some people like what they’re doing, but I have a passion for what I’m doing,” she said. “And when you have a passion for something, you never give up.”