The Odd Truth, July 25, 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.

Camp Fight Club

ROCKY MOUNT, Va.-- Three teen-age camp counselors are accused of forcing young campers to take part in fistfights. What's more, they allegedly charged admission - and allowed betting.

The three have been charged with child abuse, disorderly conduct and assault.

The two 15-year-olds and one 16-year-old were counselors at a Four-H camp in Virginia between June 30th and July fourth.

A prosecutor says they helped organize fights involving eight boys between the ages of ten and 12.

According to a sheriff, other campers were charged $1 for admission. And he says the counselors and children bet as much as $4 per fight.

He says several of the campers went back home with black eyes - and one had a broken hand.

Authorities aren't saying if any adult staff members saw the fights.

Getaway Limo

SAN FRANCISCO - It was a getaway - in high style. San Francisco police charge that Rick Beal used a limo as his getaway car after pulling a bank stick-up. According to police, Beal hired the limo for a ride to the airport, and asked the driver to stop at a Bank of America branch on the way. Police say while the limo waited, Beal robbed two tellers. A witness followed the limo and called police, who stopped the car. Officers say the driver had no idea what was happening. Beal is now being held on two counts of bank robbery.

Monastery Auctions Naming Rights

PHILADELPHIA - You don't have to be a saint to have a church or monastery named in your honor.

A breakaway Old Catholic order that consists of only eight monks is selling naming rights to the new monastery it wants to build in Pennsylvania.

In its seven-day auction, which began Monday on eBay, the Benedictine Order of St. John the Beloved opened bidding at $1 million for a package of items including the church building and grounds, a monastery, a retreat center and bell towers.

The items can be bid on separately, and the highest bidders will have their purchases named after them or a person of their choice.

Three days into the auction, the order had received no bids.

A Taxidermist's Paradise

LONDON - Stuffed kittens dressed in bridal gear, a two-headed lamb, a four-legged duck: for more than a century, Mr. Potter's Museum of Curiosities has been amusing and horrifying visitors.

Now the whole bizarre collection is going under the hammer.

On Sept. 23 and 24 auctioneers Bonhams will sell the collection of around 10,000 items at the museum site in Bolventor, southwest England.

Jon Baddeley of Bonhams said it took him and two assistants a month to sort out the collection, which he expects to raise around $400,000.

"It must be unique, I've never seen anything like it, Baddeley said. "There's a black rhino head, for example. There can't be many of those and there aren't many black rhino left, anyway," Baddeley said in a recent interview.

"Some people say that all those stuffed animals aping humans is a horrible idea. But you have to admire the skill," added Baddeley, who described one tableau of a monkey riding a goat as "pure Salvador Dali."

In the Kittens' Wedding tableau, 20 stuffed kittens are posed in clothes of the style of the late 1890s. With strict attention to detail, Mr. Potter furnished the bridesmaids with frilly bloomers.

There are rats in a gambling den and Spot the dog which caught the rats, squirrels playing cards, a mummified hand, a hen which laid 462 eggs in one year, a classroom of rabbits and a scuffling iron used by smugglers to make false hoof marks to confuse pursuers.

Man Charged In Tarantula Mailing

TAMPA, Fla. - A man was accused Wednesday of mailing a live tarantula to a woman.

John A. Galarza, of Apollo Beach, was charged Wednesday with one count of mailing a poisonous spider with the intent to kill or injure the recipient, an indictment said.

Few details were available Wednesday. The indictment didn't say how Galarza knew the woman, Karen Figueroa of Tampa, if she was bitten or what happened to the spider. The U.S. Attorney's office didn't immediately return telephone calls.

The indictment said Galarza mailed the hairy spider from a Brandon post office.

Galarza faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. He declined comment to the St. Petersburg Times.

Despite their nasty reputation, tarantulas are considered only mildly poisonous and rarely bite humans. They are considered loners, can grow up to 10 inches long and live up to 30 years.

Huge Dinosaur Bone Cache Unearthed In Idaho

POCATELLO, Idaho - A paleontology graduate student on a stroll with his father stumbled upon more dinosaur bones in one day than had previously been discovered in the state's history.

Jason Moore stopped at a stone outcropping on a southeast Idaho hillside to give his father a lesson in fossil hunting.

"I happened to glance down and said, `That large pile of bones on the ground is bone,"' said Moore, who studies paleontology at Cambridge University.

Moore and his parents scoured the hillside, finding more fragments, and soon realized a dinosaur was buried in the earth below.

The discovery in late June became the most complete dinosaur skeleton ever found in Idaho, and it doubled the number of known dinosaur bones in Idaho. The location remains secret.

Experts say the animal was probably a large herbivore, perhaps a Tenontosaurus, that lived during the late Early Cretaceous Period, which began about 89 million years ago and lasted about 16 million years.

Until now, most dinosaur hunters have avoided Idaho, where soil and vegetation cover rocks and make searching difficult. Montana State University paleontologists Frankie Jackson said searching in Idaho requires spending more time driving than digging.

"Because it's not an area that's been prospected extensively, anything you find there is going to be important," Jackson said.

Bull Escapes Rodeo, Terrorizes Shoppers

SALT LAKE CITY - No bull was better named.

A rodeo bull named Fear Factor wasn't done bucking after ditching his rider Wednesday in the Delta Center. The animal escaped a holding pen and bolted for the streets, surprising late-night visitors to the Gateway Center, an upscale shopping center across the street from the arena.

The bull destroyed a table at an outdoor cafe after jumping down a 6-foot ledge, but there were no injuries.

"He's bigger than I was," said arena security guard Sharon Rudd. "We were trying to close the gate, but we weren't fast enough."

The bull's public rampage lasted only a few minutes before he was lassoed and returned to the rodeo.

Borders Books Bans Singer After Bush Joke

FREDERICKSBURG, Va. - Singer-songwriter Julia Rose doesn't like President Bush's legs. She's been banned from a Borders Books and Music store in Virginia for commenting on the president's physique. Rose was performing at the Fredericksburg Borders, when she told the crowd the president has — quote — "`chicken legs." She said he needs to pump some iron. The line drew a laugh, but not from Borders' management. She's been banned from that store, but not others in the chain. Rose says she's mystified by the reaction. She tells the Free Lance-Star newspaper she was just poking fun at the president's frame and wasn't making a political comment.