Quick Takes: Return to sender

CARRIE CLARK’S INDOOR CAT vanished in April. For a week Clark and her husband scoured their Utah house and neighborhood looking for signs of their pet Galena. Then they got a call from a Los Angeles veterinarian who had just scanned Galena’s microchip. “I didn’t believe her at first and thought it was a prank,” Clark told KSL-TV. According to the veterinarian, a California Amazon warehouse worker found the animal in an oversized box of returned goods that the Clarks had packed in their home. Apparently, the cat had jumped in the box and was hidden under other packages when the Clarks sealed it up and shipped it back to Amazon. The cat survived six days until the Amazon employee discovered her. After getting a positive prognosis from the veterinarian, the Clarks booked a flight to reunite with their pet.

Ovation enforcement

A California school board fired its superintendent April 30 after a monthslong investigation revealed she used her position to bully students who weren’t nice to her daughter. Last year, district officials say then-Superintendent of Poway Unified School District Marian Kim Phelps texted and made harassing phone calls to students who she claimed didn’t clap loudly enough for her daughter during a year-end softball awards banquet. According to NBC San Diego, Phelps threatened to prevent some students from graduating unless they apologized to her daughter.

Bigfoot on campus

Police in Ohio are investigating a prank that sent a local elementary school into lockdown. According to officials with the Firelands Local Schools in Lorain County, Ohio, a parent walked onto school property dressed as Bigfoot while elementary students played outside. The Sasquatch-clad interloper alarmed teachers, who quickly rounded up students, shooed them inside, and entered lockdown. Police later detained the parent during a traffic stop but didn’t immediately press charges.

No ID, no ballot

When former U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson arrived at his polling station to vote in local elections May 2, he fell victim to his own law. Election workers denied Johnson access to the polls because he failed to produce a valid photo identification. Johnson’s 2022 Elections Act requires voters to prove their identity with a picture ID. The Guardian reported that Johnson forgot his identification card but returned to the polls later that day to cast a legal ballot.

Who ya gonna call?

Turns out, there really was a monster in the closet. A North Carolina 3-year-old’s plaintive cry about a monster in her bedroom closet prompted her family to investigate only to discover an enormous beehive. In April, beekeeper Curtis Collins used thermal imaging to find a hive containing more than 50,000 bees in the attic and wall of the home belonging to mother Ashley Class. According to Collins, the hive was twice as large as any he’d previously removed. Class told NBC News that her daughter gave Collins a new title: “She looks straight at him and said, ‘He’s not a beekeeper. He’s a monster hunter.’”

The tax man erreth

Barry Tangert could have either laughed or gotten a second job. In April the Pennsylvania man received an IRS tax refund worth more than $900 along with a letter from the Pennsylvania Department of Revenue saying Tangert owed nearly $34.6 billion for underpaying his state taxes. Knowing the bill was a blunder, Tangert called the agency to complain. The agent on the other end of the line had a sense of humor. “The first thing he said was, ‘You had a good year.’ And I said, ‘I wish,’” Tangert told WGAL. Responding to media inquiries, the tax department admitted someone entered the wrong information while calculating Tangert’s taxes.

Come one, come all!

One San Jose, Calif., mom might want to pick up some more party hats. While sending out invitations recently for her daughter’s first birthday party, Emily King says she pressed the wrong button and sent the Evite invitation to all 487 people in her phone’s contact list. “Take a second and think about everyone stored in your phone and how they’re stored in your phone,” King said on social media. That means near strangers got the invite under the name King had labeled them in her phone. On the official invite list: “Derek Eye Roll” and “Jess Hit Her Car In Parking Lot.” “I have to quit or get a new identity,” she said in a TikTok post. “I don’t even know.”