Odds and Ends – Friday March 1, 2019 – March 7, 2019

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(Pima County Sheriff’s Office via AP)
(Pima County Sheriff’s Office via AP)

Camels found wandering in Arizona yard are back home

Sahuarita, Ariz. (AP) – Two camels in southern Arizona are back home after going for an impromptu trek in the desert. Pima County sheriff’s officials said authorities Tuesday found the owners of the runaway camels. Deputies were called to a residence in the town of Sahuarita on Monday night and found the camels roaming a front yard. They were able to corral the animals away from the property. Deputies say it’s not unusual to get calls from time to time about livestock on the loose.

Beer from 1886 shipwreck
may yield new brew

Cobleskill, N.Y. (AP) – Ahoy, beer lovers: A bottle from a 133-year-old shipwreck may yield yeast for a new brew in upstate New York. Biotechnology students at the State University of New York at Cobleskill uncorked a bottle from the shipwrecked SS Oregon on Thursday. Serious Brewing Company of Howes Cave plans to develop a new brew if the students successfully extract yeast. Bill Felter, of Serious Brewing, acquired the beer from a customer who owns an assortment of artifacts recovered from the Oregon. The ship was en route from Liverpool, England, to New York City with 852 people aboard on March 14, 1886, when it collided with a schooner near Fire Island, New York, and sank. All but one person survived. Last year, an Australian brewer produced beer from yeast recovered from a 220-year-old shipwreck.

Nightmare: Man’s car stolen
while he’s asleep in back seat

Newark, Del. (AP) – A man’s nap in the back of his car in Delaware turned into a nightmare after the car he was sleeping in was stolen and crashed. Musician Justin Koerner told the News Journal he had spent a night playing music with friends, went to sleep in his vehicle and had a dream involving someone jumping in his front seat. A Newark police statement says someone drove off in the car Sunday morning and bailed after seeing the man sleeping in the back. Police say the car crashed. Koerner says he awoke and saw car treads on a lawn and a destroyed bush, then realized he hadn’t been dreaming. He says police appeared ready to take him away before another officer said a neighbor had security camera footage of the incident.

Cockroaches named after exes
to be fed to Texas zoo animals

El Paso, Texas (AP) – Not in the Valentine’s Day spirit? A Texas zoo has a cockroach that can help. The El Paso Zoo is running a promotion called “Quit Bugging Me” that allows people to name cockroaches after ex-spouses, former friends or anyone else on the nope list. On Thursday, the cockroaches will be fed to various zoo animals. The zoo’s Facebook page features dozens of pink-heart graphics showing black cockroaches and various first names or initials of people’s exes. Zoo officials say the response has been so overwhelming that they’ve had to cut off the submission period. Cockroaches were fed to meerkats, tamarins, marmosets and other zoo animals.

Home investor finds staircase booby-trapped with a knife

Philadelphia (AP) – A Philadelphia real estate investor says a home he was scoping out came with an unadvertised surprise – a stairway booby-trapped with a swinging knife. Ekrem Uysaler says he and his team were looking at the home in January when one of his co-workers saw a small line on the home’s staircase. WCAU-TV reports he stopped his construction manager from heading up the stairs and recorded video as they pulled the staircase line with a spare rod. Pulling the line triggered a fast-moving, downward-swinging crutch from above the staircase. Taped to the end of the crutch was a large knife pointing right to where a person’s head would have been walking up the stairs. Uysaler says he has never encountered something like this before. He says “It’s like ‘Home Alone’ … Philly style.”