News of the Weird: Week of March 13, 2025

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Awwwwww

Looking for love? If you're in Dodauer Forest in northern Germany, you're in luck. The Associated Press reported on March 4 about the Bridegroom's Oak, a 500-year-old tree that has served as a mailbox for the lovelorn for over a century. The custom originated with a couple whose relationship was opposed by the woman's father; they left messages for each other in the tree's knothole and eventually married in 1892. Here's how it works: People send a letter (address: Brautigamseiche, Dodauer Forest, 23701 Eutin, Germany), and the postmaster delivers it to the tree. Visitors can climb a 10-foot ladder to retrieve a few letters, leaf through them and choose a pen pal. "The resulting pen pal relationships have even led to a few marriages," noted the postal service.

Bright Idea

James Coxall, 42, of Castle Camps, a village in Cambridgeshire, England, was sick of driving around -- and sometimes driving into -- an 8-foot-long, 4-inch-deep pothole that had been in the road for more than a year, The Washington Post reported. So Coxall, a carpenter, repurposed a pair of jeans his daughter had grown out of, filling the legs with wood and old shirts and attaching some shoes at the hems. Then he fashioned an anchor to hold the contraption upright -- or upside down, as it were -- and put it in the pothole, so that it looked like someone was head-down in the hole. He thought it might spur some action on the hole, and indeed, on Feb. 27, the county filled the hole. "They fixed the hole," Coxall said. "They just got another several million to do in Cambridgeshire."

Surprise!

Dean Harrison and two of his friends were fishing on his open-top boat on Feb. 28 when a 900-pound bottlenose dolphin crashed onto the 16-foot vessel, the Associated Press reported. The men were along the far north coast of New Zealand's North Island when they saw dolphins playing nearby. "This one decided to jump on board and say hello," Harrison said. The 11-foot-long dolphin's wild movements snapped "every single fishing rod we had in the boat," Harrison said, and severely damaged the bow. The animal was stuck, so the men alerted New Zealand's conservation agency, which directed them to a boat ramp an hour away. While they motored toward help, they kept the dolphin wet with a hose and a towel. At the ramp, members of the Maori tribe prayed for the dolphin, which they named Tohu, which means "sign." Harrison has also renamed his boat Tohu.

Questionable Judgment

Newsweek reported on March 5 that a Reddit post has blown up. The post details a stunt that landed a man and his brother-in-law in small claims court over medical bills of more than $2,000. While the poster was napping in a hammock with his shirt off, his BIL filled his navel with super glue, he said. When he awoke, the glue was dry, and he was hesitant to aggressively try to remove it because of scars from an earlier gall bladder surgery. The BIL "thought it was funny right up until we left for the emergency room," the poster wrote. But after the BIL wouldn't cover his medical bills, the poster won in court. "This has caused a major rift in my family," he wrote. "My wife is upset, and her family thinks I overreacted." But Redditers are on his side: "This was straight-up malicious. This wasn't a prank," one wrote.

Irony

CTV News reported that three framed paintings were stolen from St. Andrew's Church in Little Steeping, England, on Feb. 23. One was a painting of the Lord's Prayer; the second depicted Moses delivering the Ten Commandments; and the third illustrated the commandments -- including "Thou Shalt Not Steal." While the church was unclear about the value of the paintings, they held "sentimental" value to the parishioners.

Weird Science

Li Zhang, a professor of physiology and neuroscience at the University of Southern California, has authored a study showing that laboratory mice would leap into action to help their companions who were incapacitated, NPR reported on March 2. Their behavior included biting the unconscious mouse, biting its tongue and licking its eyes -- and "eventually pulling the tongue out of the mouth of this unconscious one" to clear its airway, Zhang said. The response was much stronger for mice that had been caged together for a long time, he said.

Saw That Coming

Jordan Dove, 34, of Lugoff, South Carolina, and his daughter stopped by his uncle's home in Saint Matthews, South Carolina, on Feb. 24 to check on it, WIS-TV reported. The uncle, Alfonzo Brown, is incarcerated in Maryland. But as they approached the front door, the daughter said, they heard sounds "similar to fireworks," and she noticed her father had been shot. Thomas Summers, the Calhoun County sheriff, said Brown had booby-trapped his home by screwing a shotgun inside the home, pointed toward the door. "He knew he would be on the run, he knew that he would be tracked back to Calhoun County, he knew that we would be coming out to get him, and I think he set it up for us," Summers said. Unfortunately, his nephew died at the hospital. Summers said Brown would be charged with murder and possession of a weapon by a convicted felon. "This is a horrible thing, a horrible thing," Summers said.

Great Art

              -- When performance artist Marco Evaristti installed three piglets in a cage as an art installation in Copenhagen, he was hoping to raise awareness of the suffering caused by mass meat production in Denmark, Sky News reported on March 6. The piglets were being denied food and water and were intended to starve to death in the show, called And Now You Care. But animal rights activists, assisted by Evaristti's friend Caspar Steffensen, stole the pigs from the exhibition. "I was very disappointed when Caspar told me ... that he was involved in the theft," Evaristti said. "But then I thought about it for a few hours and realized that at least this way, the piglets would have a happy life." The artist said he'll revive the exhibition but will try to get dead piglets from meat processing plants and present them to the public. "I want to display them in a transparent refrigerator," he said. "I'm willing to pay a high price."

              -- At the Goldin auction house in Runnemede, New Jersey, a Cheeto shaped like the Pokemon Charizard sold on March 2 for $72,000, the Associated Press reported. The "3-inch-long Flamin' Hot Cheeto ... affixed to a customized Pokemon card and encapsulated in a clear card storage box" was discovered and preserved sometime between 2018 and 2022. Sixty people bid on the item. Sixty.

Animal Antics

Aimee Preece of Carrick, Australia, got up from bed to let her dogs out in early March, then decided to make a bathroom stop, ABC News reported on March 5. But while she was relieving herself, a Tasmanian devil ran into the bathroom, chased by the dogs, and hid behind the toilet. "I've never seen one that close," Preece said. She trapped the animal in the bathroom, then got on social media for help. Olivia Dykstra, a catcher of snakes (and other critters), responded, using a snake bag and a broom to wrangle the devil. The bathroom didn't fare so well: "There was nothing in that bathroom that had not been upset, kicked off shelves, you name it," Dykstra said. She delivered the devil to an area where they're often sighted.

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