News of the Weird

CNN, reporting from the London Zoo in August, described the excitement surrounding news that the zoo would soon acquire a 12-year-old male gorilla from a preserve in France. Zoo officials were pleased, but its three older female gorillas were almost ecstatic. Shown posters of Yeboah, the male, female Zaire "shrieked in delight"; Effie wedged the poster into a tree and stared at it; and Mjukuu held the photo close to her chest, "then ate it."

A young, media-shy Chinese woman, identified only as Mrs. Wang and photographed in jeans, a T-shirt and baseball cap, purchased an 18-month-old Tibetan mastiff in September for a reported $585,000. She ordered a motorcade of 30 luxury cars to meet her and the dog on their arrival in Xi'an, in Shaanxi province. The price is almost four times the previous reported high for the purchase of a dog (a cloned Labrador, by a Florida family).

The hatching of two chicks on the same day at the Jerusalem Biblical Zoo in April was unusual enough, but especially noteworthy because of the birds' lineage. Their fathers were a gay vulture couple about 10 years ago, according to a report in the Israeli daily Haaretz. Zoo caretakers provided them an artificial egg to "incubate" until they could replace the egg with a just-hatched vulture, as if the male-male couple had birthed it. The two males eventually separated and paired with females, and -- in "an insane coincidence," a zoo official said -- those females hatched eggs on the same day in April. Recently, according to Haaretz, the two chicks achieved independence on the same day and were moved to the zoo's aviary.

Among the species discovered recently in Papua New Guinea were tiny bear-like creatures, frogs with fangs, fish that grunt, kangaroos that live in trees, and what is probably the world's largest rat (with no fear of humans). Scientists from Britain, the United States and Papua New Guinea announced the findings in September, among more than 40 new species from a jungle habitat a half-mile deep inside the centuries-dormant Mount Bosavi volcano crater.

Surprisingly, the recession otherwise felt in the Phoenix area this year has largely spared psychics. An October Arizona Republic report found that while longtime clients tended to reduce their use of astrology and related fields, their business was replaced by a new class of customers desperate to know the future -- those facing financial ruin because of bad home mortgages. Few seemed to sense the irony of purchasing questionable psychic services to overcome the consequences of questionable mortgage decisions.

Elsa Seman, 71, was shot and killed in North Versailles, Pa., in September, when she was mistaken for a prowler. According to police, Seman had gone to the home of her ex-boyfriend at night and, dressed in black, commando-style, was lying in wait in his yard with a pistol, intending to kill him. A neighbor called in the report of a prowler, and a police officer arriving at the scene fatally shot Seman.

Police in Southern California know what the man looks like (from surveillance video) but have not yet apprehended a well-dressed, 70ish man who has robbed four banks since August. The latest was a Bank of America in Rancho Santa Fe in October. The man has shown special dexterity to pull off the robberies, since he is on oxygen and has to carry around a tank.

Read News of the Weird daily at www.weirduniverse.net. Send items to weirdnews@earthlink.net.