Curses, foiled again
State police arrested Lonnie Meckwood, 29, and Phillip Weeks, 51, for robbing a gas station in Kirkwood, N.Y., after their getaway car ran out of gas.
Don’t have a cow
When Tammy Nuttelman called 911 because some cows had escaped from her farm near Juneau, Wis., she began swearing at the dispatcher who told her escaped cows weren’t an emergency. “I got seven ***king cows out, maybe going to the ***king highway, and you need to let everybody know that there are loose cows out there!” Nuttelman said, according to the transcript. “They’ll probably cause a major ***king accident, you hear me?” The dispatcher finally called a sheriff’s deputy, who came to Nuttelman’s house to cite her for misuse of 911. Afterwards, Nuttelman told Milwaukee’s WTMJ Radio News that she overreacted, explaining, “I mean, who doesn’t when you call 911?”
When guns are outlawed
Police in Treasure Island, Fla., charged Bonita P. Miller, 59, with domestic battery after they said she struck her live-in boyfriend with a can of air freshener and a potted plant. The St. Petersburg Times reported she then jabbed him in the back with a key.
Fecundity justice
Ex-pro football player and convicted cocaine trafficker Travis Henry, 30, faced 10 years in prison and a $4 million fine when he walked into a Billings, Mont., courtroom, but U.S. District Judge Cebull, calling Henry “a heck of a football player,” sentenced him to just three years in prison and five years’ probation. The Denver Post reported that Cebull waived the fine because Henry, who according to court documents has fathered 11 children by 10 women, could not afford it.
Fossil of the week
Australian scientists have found the world’s oldest penis in an ancient fish specimen. The team previously located fish from the Devonian era that paleontologist John Long told ABC Science Online had “some structures in the pelvic fin that suggested copulation.” But, he added, “we hadn’t found the business end of how they were doing it.” The 400-million-year-old reproductive organ turned up in an extinct class of armored fish called placoderms, which had a long clasper, made entirely of bone, “with a knobbly end” said Long, explaining male fish used the clasper to grip inside the female while they were mating.
Compiled from the nation’s press by Roland Sweet. Submit items, citing date and source, to P.O. Box 8130, Alexandria VA 22306.
