The Odd Truth, July 11, 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.
Message In A Bottle
ST. PETERSBURG, Florida - It took more than 18 years for a child's message scrawled in a bottle and set adrift to find its way home. It arrived just in time to comfort the boy's parents — who are grieving the fifth anniversary of their son's death.
Roger Clay was just seven years old when he put the note with his name and address in a Pepsi bottle during a vacation. He sealed the bottle with tape and tossed it into the Gulf of Mexico. That was December 27th, 1984.
Roger died in a motorcycle accident five years ago, just after his 21st birthday. His mother, Lisa Ferguson, says ever since his death, this time of year is especially difficult.
A man by the name of Don Smith found the old bottle this week in Tampa Bay. While tracking Roger down, Smith learned about his death, and was determined to locate the boy's parents. He reached Lisa Ferguson near St. Petersburg.
Roger's father, also named Roger, says: "It's like he was trying to remind us he was still with us."
Massive Meat Heist Sliced
NORFOLK, Neb. - Maybe they were on that all-protein fad diet?
A former employee at the Tyson Foods meatpacking plant in Norfolk and an accomplice are accused of making off with more than $30,000 worth of steaks.
The thefts of more than 7,000 pounds of meat took place between January and March, State Patrol spokeswoman Terri Teuber said Thursday.
The investigation began several weeks ago and two men ages 41 and 45 were arrested at a mobile home in Stanton on Tuesday on suspicion of felony theft, she said.
One of the men was a former employee at the plant, Teuber said. The other man was not believed to have worked there, she said.
Tyson Foods spokesman Ed Nicholson declined to comment, saying he did not have all details of the case.
Rubber Ducks To Wash Up In New England
BOSTON - A floating flock of rubber ducks is expected to wash ashore in New England.
The ducks, their yellow coats now bleached white, are stamped with the brand "The First Years."
The toys tumbled into the ocean when a container ship en route from China to Seattle lost 20 containers in a storm in the Pacific Ocean in January, 1992.
From there, oceanographers say the 29,000 toys floated along the Alaska coast, reaching the Bering Strait by 1995 and Iceland five years later. By 2001 they had ridden currents to near where the Titanic sank.
Some kept going — others headed off to Europe. Ocean experts says hundreds could soon be popping up on New England beaches.
Teens Confess To Calif. Crop Circles
ROCKVILLE, Calif. - Throngs of UFO enthusiasts, new age followers and assorted believers in the paranormal have been flocking to the Sacramento Valley to take in the dozen or so crop circles that mysteriously appeared in a wheat field two weeks ago.
But it now appears the most simple explanation is at hand for why a sleepy farming community halfway between San Francisco and Sacramento has been turned into a tourist destination: four bored Fairfield teens confessed to The Vacaville Reporter.
"Man, we had to rest sometimes," one teen told the paper of the quartet's hours-long handiwork conducted during the wee hours of June 28. "My back got tired and I laid down in the field."
The paper said in an editor's note that the confession "rang true."
"Because three of the four are juveniles, and three of the four are already on probation for unrelated matters, we decided their request for anonymity was reasonable," the paper said.
The teens told the paper they were inspired by a documentary they had watched discussing the 400-year history of crop circles. Armed with a 30-foot rope, planks of wood and tape, the teens created a connected series of circles by pressing down on the wheat.
One teen stood in the center of the circle holding the rope. A second would hold on to the other end of the rope. They would then use the wood to flatten the wheat. The biggest circles measure 60-feet in diameter.
The teens' parents said they were aware of the boys' prank. One mother even bought the movie "Signs" to celebrate their feat.
The circles wiped out about $500 worth of wheat. But Larry Balestra, the field's owner, told the paper he had no intention of pressing charges. In fact, he told the paper he's preparing to sell $12 alien T-shirts.
Still, Balestra said he was little disappointed to hear the teens had claimed responsibility.
"It's sad," Balestra told the paper, "because this made so many people happy."
Giant, Stupefied Python Taken To Zoo
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia - Seven men struggled for more than an hour to lift a huge python that had recently swallowed a goat or a similar-sized animal in a village in southern Malaysia, so it could be taken to a zoo.
Residents of Kuala Pilah village, about 50 miles south of Kuala Lumpur, found the 16-foot long, thigh-thick python lying stupefied in a ditch near an oil palm plantation, fire department spokesman Mat Nordin Abu Bakar said Friday.
A large bulge in the snake's midriff indicated it had recently eaten a big meal.
"The villagers believe it had eaten a goat that had gone missing, but we can't say for sure," Mat Nordin told The Associated Press. "It could even be a wild boar from the nearby plantation."
Four Fire and Rescue Department officers and three villagers took over an hour to hoist the snake out of the ditch and into a truck, he said.
The snake was taken to the National Zoo in Kuala Lumpur.
Tropical Malaysia is home to more than 140 species of snake, from delicate, brightly colored tree snakes to heavy pythons that use their bulk to crush prey before swallowing it whole.
Large snakes are often found in plantations, where they feed on squirrels and other mammals. Pythons, which are not poisonous, rarely attack humans.
What Wedding?
PITTSBURGH - A judge has annulled a woman's two-month marriage after she said she didn't remember the ceremony.
When she said "I do," Alma Tremmel, 32, was hospitalized in critical condition, on a respirator, and taking powerful drugs for pneumonia and depression, her attorney said.
Tremmel was taking "six or seven different things at the time" — including morphine and Valium — and "any one of those things alone would have been enough to cloud her reasoning skills, let alone in combination," her attorney, James Huff, said Thursday.
Tremmel said she has a vague recollection of a hospital minister at her bedside. But Tremmel said she has since learned that she received last rites several times during her 13-day stay at Bon Secours-Holy Family Hospital in April.
Blair County Judge Hiram Carpenter III granted the annulment Wednesday. The ruling means that, under Pennsylvania law at least, Tremmel was never married to Edward Wert, 35.
Virginia Wert, the groom's mother, said she was present for the ceremony, as was Tremmel's mother, when Tremmel signed the license application in her intensive care room.
"It seemed to me like she knew. She had to point out (something) on the paper" application for the marriage license, Virginia Wert said.
Tremmel, a widowed mother of two, said she had known Wert for years because he had been a friend of her late husband, who died three years ago. Tremmel said she began dating Wert "out of loneliness" and the couple lived together for several months.
Tremmel said the couple had discussed marriage "a few times, but I was very, very leery about it."
Wert didn't hire an attorney and didn't contest the annulment, although he reaffirmed his love for her during court proceedings. Wert, who now lives with his parents, didn't immediately return a call seeking comment Thursday.
Rat Advocate Cleared In Tampering Case
SANTA BARBARA, California - A federal magistrate has cleared a bus driver who prosecutors said tried to thwart government efforts to rid islands off the West Coast of the United States of black rats.
Rob Puddicombe, 52, was accused of scattering pellets containing vitamin K, an antidote for rat poison, on Anacapa Island, one of the Channel Islands.
U.S. Magistrate Willard McEwen Jr. said in a decision released Thursday that federal prosecutors failed to prove during last month's trial that Puddicombe illegally fed the animals and interfered with agency functions.
National Park Service officials have been spreading rat poison across the island to eradicate the nonnative black rats, which threaten several native species.
Puddicombe, who had faced up to a year in jail, praised the decision.
"I only wish the animals on Anacapa could have gotten the same fair trial I did," he said.