News of the Weird: Week of Dec. 9, 2021

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Creme de la Weird

Some news items just catapult themselves to the lead story position. On a Delta airlines flight in November from Syracuse, New York, to Atlanta, the woman sitting in 13A allegedly tried to breastfeed her hairless cat, much to the cat's (and other passengers') distress. Flight attendants repeatedly asked the woman to return the yowling cat to its kennel, the New York Post reported, but she refused. "Her shirt was up and she was trying to get the cat to latch ... and the cat was screaming for its life," said Ainsley Elizabeth, a flight attendant who was on board during the incident. Finally, a message was sent through the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS) alerting the ground crew in Atlanta that they would need a Red Coat team member to apprehend the woman at the gate. (Red Coats are specially trained to handle customer service issues, which now include cat-breastfeeding.) It's unclear what happened to the woman or her cat after the flight landed.

Cuteness Alert

The Flower Mound Rebels, a youth football team in Texas, won't be in the playoffs this year, NBC News reported. The Rebels, composed of 7- and 8-year-olds, are "too good" for their league, boasting a perfect record and having outscored their opponents 199-6, according to Keller Youth Association Vice President Rhett Taylor. "They are a select-level team." He said if the team had competed in the league's super bowl, he would have caught it from parents of other teams. Center Greyson Tanner, 8, reported being "very sad" about the ruling.

Randy Aliens

Preacher and author Sharon Gilbert, 69, raised a reaction when she appeared on the "Jim Bakker Show" on Nov. 23 and described the moment when an alien visited her for nefarious reasons. "After Derek and I got married, one night, this other Derek appears in our bed. The real Derek is lying down next to me; other Derek sits right up out of him. It startled me," she said, according to Newsweek. No doubt! Gilbert asked the "critter" who he was, "Because he clearly wanted to have sexual relations." Along with claiming to be Derek, the creature said he was Xerxes, but Gilbert wasn't having it. "I reached up, grabbed his face and I said, 'You are a liar, and Jesus is real.' And I pulled that face off, and beneath it was a reptile." One Twitter user responded, "This is a story a 7-year-old tells when you ask them why they're late for something."

'Educational' Toy

Ania Tanner, a grandmother from Ontario, Canada, found a cute singing and dancing cactus on the Walmart website and purchased it for her granddaughter, CTV News reported. The animated $26 toy sings in three languages: English, Spanish and Polish. But when Tanner, who is Polish, listened to the Polish lyrics, she was shocked: "This toy uses swear words and talking about cocaine use. This is not what I ordered for my granddaughter. I was in shock. I thought, what is this, some kind of joke?" The Polish song is by rapper Cypis, who didn't give permission for the use of his song by the Chinese manufacturer of the item. For its part, Walmart said the toy is sold by a third-party vendor and will be removed while they investigate.

Oops!

Twenty-year-old Lucy Battle of Burnley, England, nearly threw out the baby with the bathwater ... er, with the sofa, recently. Battle posted an ad on Facebook Marketplace about her sofa, with the caption "Need gone today," but she accidentally posted a photo of her 7-month-old son, Oscar, rather than of the furniture, Leeds Live reported. "I just somehow managed to upload the wrong photo ... I didn't expect it to go so far!" Battle said. One user commented, "Can I swap for a teenager?" But Battle isn't budging: "I don't want to give away my child."

Awesome!

Swedish meatballs for everyone! A snowstorm that dumped about 12 inches in Aalborg, Denmark, on the evening of Dec. 1 forced about 30 people to spend the night in an Ikea store, Pix11-TV reported. Store manager Peter Elmose said customers and employees slept "in the furniture exhibitions and our showroom on the first floor, where we have beds, mattresses and sofa beds," giving shoppers the chance to "pick the exact bed they have always wanted to try. It's been a good night. All fun."

The Tan Hill Inn in northern England -- Britain's highest-altitude pub -- drew a big crowd on Nov. 26 for the Oasis cover band Noasis. But when heavy snow and dangerous wind conditions hit the remote pub, more than 60 people were stranded there, with the exits blocked and vehicles buried, NPR reported. People slept on the floor and mattresses and ate Yorkshire pudding while playing games and watching movies. Noasis missed their next gig, in Essex, but everyone was able to leave the inn by Nov. 29 with a great story to tell.

People With Too Much Time on Their Hands ... or, Try the Decaf

Mark Smith of Cass County, Missouri, filed a class-action lawsuit in late November against Folgers Coffee Co. and its parent company, J.M. Smucker, for misleading label information about the serving sizes and quantity of coffee in its canisters. Smith says the company has "grossly misinterpreted the number of cups of coffee" that can be made from a container, calling it a "classic and unlawful bait-and-switch scheme," The Kansas City Star reported. Folgers rebutted by saying that the label offers two ways to make coffee, and its label uses the words "up to" when describing how much a canister could make.

Bright Idea

In Greenwood, South Carolina, firefighters responded on Nov. 28 to the Morningside assisted living facility, where several rounds of ammunition, which had apparently been stored in a toaster oven, discharged and caught a resident's apartment on fire. WSPA-TV reported that employees initially believed a shooter was on the property when they heard the shots, but the room's resident was found unconscious and suffering from smoke inhalation. The fire was extinguished, and no other apartments were damaged.

A Likely Story

Dale Wheeler, a 56-year-old IT worker from Morrisville, North Carolina, crashed his car just four miles away from his home on Nov. 12 and then disappeared, The Raleigh News and Observer reported. Officers responding to the crash found the keys still in the car, along with "a little bit of blood." Wheeler was reported missing after not showing up for work for two days, but it was almost two weeks before anyone saw him again. On Nov. 28, someone called police to do a welfare check at Wheeler's home and found him there, alert and conscious. He was taken to a hospital, where he explained that he had walked away from the accident but went back to find his phone, then was lost in the woods for nearly two weeks before finding his way home. Police said an investigation is ongoing.

That's So Haute

Politix, a menswear brand in Australia, celebrated Movember (when men grow mustaches to raise awareness of men's health care concerns) with a special suit of clothing made of mustache hair, Oddity Central reported. The Mo-Hair suit's fabric was made by Melbourne artist Pamela Kleeman-Passi, who collected hair from salons and individuals. "When hair is on your head, it looks really beautiful," she said. "But when it's off the body, it immediately becomes disgusting ... I'm interested in the polarity between what's really voluptuous and what's really repulsive." If you're interested in the Mo-Hair suit, sorry: It isn't commercially available.

Send your weird news items with subject line WEIRD NEWS to WeirdNewsTips@amuniversal.com.

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