The Odd Truth, May 13, 2003
The Odd Truth is a collection of strange but factual news stories from around the world compiled by CBSNews.com's Brian Bernbaum. A new collection of stories is published each weekday. On weekends, you can read a week's worth of The Odd Truth.
Martian Puppy
RIDDLE, Oregon - Debra Ashdown was a little blue when one of her new puppies came out green. Ashdown's Siberian husky, Pixie, had a litter of seven pups. The first six looked normal but the seventh had green fur. The Riddle, Oregon, woman was so worried about the strange looking little dog, she took it to the vet. But Dr. Alan Ross assured her the green puppy wasn't a critter from Mars. He says the puppy's fur was stained by naturally occurring fluids in utero. Ross says the green tinge will fade with time.
Brutal Badger Attack Injures 5
LONDON - A man savaged in a rare badger attack is likely to be permanently scarred, his wife said Tuesday.
Pam Fitzgerald said the attack on her husband Michael, 67, at the front door of their house in Evesham in central England on Friday, was "like something out of a horror movie" in which her husband suffered severe wounds to his forearm and legs.
The animal, which is believed to have escaped from a local visitor attraction, injured four other people around the town during a 48-hour period, conservation officials said.
Fitzgerald, 60, said her husband went to investigate after hearing a loud banging noise in the garage late on Friday night.
He discovered the badger and opened the garage door to let it out. But instead of scuttling away, the animal attacked him, she said.
"It was like something out of a horror movie, he was bleeding so badly," she said. "To hear your husband screaming and shouting in such pain, it was horrifying."
Worcestershire Badger Society destroyed the creature after trapping it on the Fitzgeralds' front lawn.
Chairman Mike Weaver said it had attacked four other people, adding, "I have never heard of anything like this in 24 years of work with badgers throughout the U.K."
Fitzgerald has had several skin grafts at Birmingham's Selly Oak Hospital and was expected to be discharged later Tuesday.
For Once, A Trust Fund Baby Who Earned It
ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. - A pregnant woman who won a $4.4 million slot machine jackpot attributed the good luck to a kick from her unborn baby.
Valarie Johannessen, 34, was about to walk away from a Wheel of Fortune progressive slot machine at Bally's Wild Wild West Casino on Friday night when she felt the fetus kicking her stomach.
"I was about to leave. I had played $50, and the machine was rejecting the money I was trying to put in the bill changer, which means to me that I should play a different machine, but the baby started kicking, so I said to myself, 'The baby is telling me to stay,'" Johannessen said.
Three pulls later, she hit for $4,434,930 on the 50-cent machine.
"I thought I had won $4,000 until a lady passed by and told me that I had won $4 million. She asked me why I wasn't screaming, and I said that if I started screaming, I'd probably pass out," Johannessen said.
She took home a check for $221,746, and will get equal installments every year for the next 19 years.
"If I wasn't pregnant, we'd be flying to Hawaii to celebrate," Johannessen said. "Maybe we'll take a little vacation after the baby comes. This is awesome. Dreams really do come true."
He Really Loved His Walnut Trees
COUNCIL BLUFFS, Iowa - A man who valued his walnut trees so much that he had his casket made from them was laid to rest in it.
Don Wheeler, of nearby Crescent, died last month after an extended illness.
Wheeler had worked in real estate in southwest Iowa for several years and was always on the lookout for good land, said his daughter, Lu Hoogeveen. In the 1970s, he bought property near Missouri Valley that included a stand of walnut trees.
He sold the land about 10 years ago, but before that he had the trees cut down and made into slabs. He asked a woodworker friend of his, Ken Viator, of Omaha, Neb., to build him a casket from the wood.
Viator didn't start building the casket until several years later, after Wheeler became seriously ill.
"In the back of my mind, I remembered that dad had someone doing this for him," she said. "None of us knew Ken, so I had to ask my dad. I felt kind of silly because here we were in this hospital room with the curtain drawn, and I leaned in and asked, 'Dad, what's the name of he man making your casket?' It was kind of embarrassing."
Wheeler died April 6, and Viator finished the casket on the morning of April 10, the day of Wheeler's visitation.
Microsoft 'i-Loo' A Hoax, But Still A Good Idea
REDMOND, Washington - Forget about surfing on the john. Microsoft says a company news release about a portable toilet with Internet access was a hoax. The April 30th release — issued by the company's MSN Internet division in Britain — said Microsoft was developing what it called an "i-Loo." It supposedly had a wireless keyboard and an extending height-adjustable plasma screen in front of the seat. According to the release, the i-Loo was to debut at festivals this summer in Britain. Microsoft spokeswoman Bridgitt Arnold says the news release was not sanctioned by the company. She apologizes for any confusion it caused.
Klingon Interpreters Out Of Work After All
PORTLAND, Oregon - Sorry, no Klingon interpreters needed, after all. The government agency that treats mental health patients in the Portland, Oregon, area had listed Klingon as one of 55 languages that clients might speak. Now, Multnomah County officials are taking back their call for Klingon interpreters. County Chair Diane Linn says the inclusion of the "Star Trek" language on the list was a mistake. Officials note that no mental patient had ever come in speaking only Klingon. And not a dime of public money was spent on Klingon interpretation.
London Academic Derives Perfect Film Formula
LONDON - Thirty percent action, 17 percent comedy, 13 percent good-versus-evil, 12 percent romance, 10 percent special effects, 10 percent plot and 8 percent music: that's the formula for Britons' idea of the perfect feature film, a British academic said Tuesday.
Sue Clayton, a movie director and teacher of screenwriting at the University of London, carried out a detailed analysis of the highest-grossing films in Britain over the past 10 years, ranging from Brit-flicks such as "The Full Monty" and "Notting Hill" to big budget blockbusters like "Die Another Day" and "Titanic."
"I was amazed to see how finely balanced the different components of a film need to be in order to achieve perfection," Clayton said.
Clayton said "Toy Story 2," an animated production by Disney Pixar, was the film that had the closest match to the blueprint for the perfect feature.
The film grossed more than $70 million at the British box office, more than the all-action epic, "Gladiator" and the sci-fi hit, "Independence Day."
Oscar-winning "Shakespeare in Love" came very close to matching the recipe, having similar proportions of plot, action, comedy and music — but it may have had even wider appeal if it had made use of special effects, Clayton said.
America's Armpit Embraces Its Stench
BATTLE MOUNTAIN, Nev. - It didn't take a deodorant company long to hear opportunity knocking after a magazine dubbed this northeast Nevada town the nation's armpit.
Old Spice deodorant has agreed to sponsor Battle Mountain's "Festival of the Pit" from Aug. 15-17 under a new name: "Old Spice's Festival in the Pit."
The company plans to spend about $75,000 on the festival, with events such as an armpit beauty pageant, a sweat t-shirt contest and a "quick-draw" antiperspirant contest.
Shar Peterson, executive director of the local Chamber of Commerce, said the town is coming together to support the festival after initial mixed feelings over it.
The town has erected billboards along I-80 reading "Battle Mountain, Voted the Armpit of America by the Washington Post," and "Make Battle Mountain Your Next Pit Stop."
In the humorous magazine article, Gene Weingarten chose Battle Mountain for the armpit award, citing what he described as its "lack of character and charm," its "pathetic assemblage of ghastly buildings and nasty people," and its location "in the midst of harsh and uninviting wilderness."
Students Trash Schools While Strike Continues
STOCKHOLM, Sweden - Swedish students are stopping up toilets and dumping trash in a bid to get schools to close because striking custodians aren't around to clean up.
School custodians are among the 47,000 municipal workers in 60 cities and towns who walked off their jobs Monday after a breakdown in talks to increase wages.
"It has been quite trying. There's been damage in the form of clogged toilets and sinks and quite a lot of dirtying up," Anders Sjoedahl, the assistant principal at the Fagrabaeck elementary and middle school in Vaexjoe, 250 miles southwest of the capital, Stockholm, told The Associated Press Tuesday.
Monday's walkout was the fourth in as many weeks and also affected hospitals, day care centers, school cafeteria workers and garbage collectors. Earlier strikes involved just hundreds of workers.
The series of strikes throughout the Scandinavian country of 8.9 million began April 23 after talks between mediators, local government employers and unions over pay increases broke down.
The strikers, members of the 600,000 strong Municipal Workers Union, the country's biggest, want wage increases of 5.5 percent, while employers have offered 3.2 percent.