Curses, foiled again
Mitchel L. Legg, 26, was at a police station in Richmond, Ind., filling out an application to carry a gun, when officers and staff members noticed a telltale smell. “He reeked of marijuana,” Chief Kris Wolski told the Palladium-Item, “so they patted him down.” Besides marijuana, officers found a .22 semiautomatic handgun “in a little nylon holster under his shirt,” Wolski said.

Faith-based follies
Atheists are offering to look after the cats and dogs of Christian believers after the Rapture. For $110, Eternal Earth-Bound Pets promises lifetime care for pets whose owners are transported to heaven within the next 10 years. “Each of our representatives has stated to us in writing that they are atheists, do not believe in God/Jesus, and that they have blasphemed in accordance with Mark 3:29, negating any chance of salvation,” says the group’s Web site, which advises subscribers who lose their faith or are not taken to heaven in the next 10 years that the fee is nonrefundable.

Hall of shame
A tell-all book by a former employee of Alcor, the Arizona company that froze the remains of baseball great Ted Williams, accuses the cryogenics lab of mistreating Williams’s severed head. In Frozen: My Journey into the World of Cryonics, author Larry Johnson discloses that an Alcor official swung a monkey wrench at the frozen head to remove a tuna can stuck to it. The first swing missed the can and struck the head. The second swing knocked the can loose. Johnson said Alcor used such cans, left over from feeding a cat that lived at the lab, as pedestals for its heads. Alcor Life Extension Foundation denied the book’s account and vowed on its Web site that litigation would be forthcoming “to the maximum extent of the law.”

Coitus interruptus
A man and a woman, both 44, crawled into a dumpster in Wichita, Kan., and were having what police described as “an intimate moment,” when two men robbed them. The Wichita Eagle reported the robbers, one of whom was armed with a pocketknife, took the couple’s shoes, jewelry and the man’s wallet. Police found the suspects, ages 64 and 59, with the stolen property a short time later.

Walk, don’t run
The mayor of Wellford, S.C., banned the town’s police officers from chasing suspects on foot. Sallie Peake told WSPA-TV she issued the order because the city had to pay for an officer who missed work after chasing a “guy who had a piece of crack on him.” She said a drug-possession charge wasn’t worth the cost to taxpayers, although her written order said she did “not want anyone chasing any suspects whatsoever.”

When phone calls aren’t enough
After a security screener detected Marcellus Arellano, 68, trying to enter a federal building in Portland, Ore., with three knives, Arellano, who claims the Internal Revenue Service owes him $12,000, told Federal Protective Service agent Micah Coring that he brought the knives to scare IRS workers into releasing his money.

Compiled from the nation’s press by Roland Sweet. Authentication on demand.