Is there a word for something that’s so weird that the word “weird” can’t begin to describe it? If so, please use it for these stories.
THERE’S A SUIT IN MY BUCKET
In October 2009, Alicja Tomankiewicz of Mikowice, Poland, sued her neighbor Waldemar Wilk…for kicking and damaging a $4.50 plastic bucket that she kept in her front yard. The case went to court, where Wilk pleaded not guilty. He even brought a video to the courtroom showing footage of Tomankiewicz using the bucket and argued that it proved that since the bucket wasn’t damaged, he couldn’t have kicked it. The judge said Wilk couldn’t prove that the video had been taken after he had allegedly kicked the bucket, and the footage was therefore inadmissible as evidence. Then the judge ordered that an expert be brought in to determine whether kicking a bucket could actually damage it. It could, the expert testified, and Wilk was found guilty. He appealed the case, and after 18 months of litigation, the lawsuit was dropped.
A police officer in Tiffin, Ohio, pulled over Jaime Aguirre, 42, in November 2009 for a traffic violation, and smelled marijuana coming from his car. A subsequent search of the vehicle instead turned up hundreds of X-rays of women’s torsos. Aguirre was a technician at a medical imaging center, and he’d allegedly taken the images, illegally, from his office. Why? He was using them for sexual-gratification purposes, police said. Aguirre was arrested on several charges and held in lieu of $250,000 bail. “This,” said Police Chief David Blough, “is one of the strangest things I’ve ever seen.”
On August 20, 2007, a 12-year-old girl found a running shoe on Jedediah Island, off the coast of British Columbia, Canada. She looked inside the shoe and saw a sock. She looked inside the sock—and found a human foot. Medical examiners later identified it as belonging to a man and said that it didn’t appear to have been severed, but seemed to have detached due to decomposition underwater, possibly from the body of a drowning victim. Six days later, a couple on nearby Gabriola Island found another running shoe…with a sock inside it…with a human foot in it. It, too, was from a male. In February 2008, a third foot—again, complete with shoe and sock—was found on nearby Valdes Island. This one was also a man’s. In May a fourth foot was found on Kirkland Island, this time belonging to a woman. A fifth foot found the following month on Westham Island was confirmed to be from the same person as the foot found in February. August brought another foot in a sock and running shoe, and so did November—this one a match to the foot found in May. In July 2009, police announced that they had determined the identity of the person associated with the first foot, a man who had suffered from depression and may have committed suicide. In October 2009, an eighth human foot was found in British Columbia. The case has been called one of the most bizarre in Canadian history, and no explanation for the mystery feet has been found.
A recent poll shows that 67% of Americans believe Democrats are better lovers than Republicans.
Police in Tonowanda, New York, were called to a water-treatment facility late one night in October 2009. The caller said that a man in a cow suit had stopped by the plant, buzzed the intercom, asked for directions, and then run away. Police came out to investigate and found Jeffrey S. Barber of Hamburg, New York, near the plant. He was still wearing the cow suit, which was soaking wet, and he appeared to be intoxicated. When asked what had happened, Barber told officers he was driving home from a Halloween party, and his GPS device had told him to take a right turn. He turned down a street called Aqua Lane—and drove off the dock at the end of the street, straight into the Niagara River. He smashed out a window, “like I saw how to do on TV,” he said, and swam to safety. Then he walked to the water-treatment plant to ask for directions—still wearing his cow suit—thinking it was the University of Buffalo. Barber was found to have a blood-alcohol content of 0.20, far over the limit for driving, and was arrested. Police recovered his car from the river the next day, with three beer bottles, four whiskey bottles…and one fake cow head inside.
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