Eliza Ruth Watson, 37, raises chickens in Gray, Maine, so she's used to seeing foxes nosing around, but as she worked in her garden on April 23, the fox she spotted didn't run when she tried to scare it off by hollering and waving her arms. Instead, the animal lunged toward her, ready to attack. "Thinking back on it now, the fox was a mangy, stanky fox," Watson told the Sun Journal. She responded by kicking it, but "it kept coming back, and I kept kicking it." Finally Watson grabbed the fox around the neck, and as it fought back, she shoved it into a large pot used for scalding chickens, sealed the lid and called 911 and her husband. At the hospital, she received five rabies vaccine injections. "People kept asking, 'Are you the one who wrestled the fox?' " she said. "It's certainly not how I expected to spend my day."
Surprise houseguest
On April 22, Bowling Green, Ky., Mayor Bruce Wilkerson was hard at work at a house he has been renovating when he smelled cigarette smoke and "heard a ruckus" outside, so he went to investigate. The former police officer found blood on the cellar door and a bag containing women's clothing inside, but after determining there were no reports of missing women in the area, he told the Bowling Green Daily News, he went back to his work. Later, the electricity suddenly went out, so he returned to the cellar and this time found a young woman. "She said, 'I'm hiding from someone,' " Wilkerson told police, then she ran away. Police haven't identified her, but Wilkerson wanted to set the record straight before "a story would come out that I had a lady locked up in my cellar."
Zoom fatigue
A videoconference meeting of the Vallejo, Calif., planning commission got a little weird on April 20 when Commissioner Chris Platzer announced, "I'd like to introduce my cat," then was seen throwing the cat off-screen. Later Platzer was seen drinking a beer, and after the meeting ended, city staff could still hear him making derogatory remarks about the commission, the Vallejo Times-Herald reported. In an April 25 e-mail to the newspaper, Platzer apologized for his actions and said he has resigned from the commission. "We are all living in uncertain times, and I certainly, like many of you, am adjusting to a new normalcy," he wrote.
Least competent criminal
North Carolina Highway Patrol officers stopped Lance Gordon, 32, on April 24 for speeding in a car belonging to Angela Lee, 47, of Holly Springs, whom Gordon said was an acquaintance. WRAL reported authorities grew suspicious after Holly Springs police were unable to contact Lee to confirm the story, and in a subsequent search of her house and car, investigators found Lee's body in the car's trunk. Gordon was charged with Lee's murder, along with stealing her car.
Desperate times
