News of the weird

Pop Quiz: What do you get when you cross $10,000 with Bubble Wrap, fruitcake and a surly kitty cat?

Answer: Some strange stories from the wire.

An Irvine, Calif., woman found an envelope stuffed with $10,000 in a box of crackers she bought from a grocery store. Instead of keeping the money, they family called the police, who told them the stash could have been part of a drug drop.

But the police later heard from store manager at Whole Foods in Tustin that an elderly woman had come in a few days earlier, hysterical because she had mistakenly returned a box of crackers with her life savings inside. Luckily, the box of crackers had been purchased by Debra Rogoff who had discovered the crisp $100 bills in an unmarked envelope.

Ew. Restocked crackers?

Rogoff never heard from the woman and didn’t receive a reward, but she returned to the store a couple of weeks later and asked if she could have another box of crackers.

The store obliged.

Let’s hope they weren’t recycled this time.

Need any belated gift ideas for an obsessive relative?
A New York City man has designed a calendar that will drive Bubble Wrap fanatics wild.

Stephen Turbek is selling a poster-sized calendar with plastic bubbles. Buyers can pop a bubble each day to mark the passage of time. He’s already sold thousands.

According to The Associated Press, Turbek said the calendar – which is available online for prices ranging from $30 to $50 – is perfect for obsessive people.

Excuse me, Mr. Turbek? Your calendar sounds like a great gift, but do you really know any obsessive people? For an obsessive-compulsive person, nothing is more true than the old Pringles jingle: “Once you pop, you can’t stop.”



The Shasta County, Calif., Department of Environmental Health is cracking down on fruitcakes.

That’s bad news for 86-year-old Jack Melton, who has been baking and selling his pecan-laden cakes from his Churn Creek Road home for more than a decade.

Melton, a disabled World War II Navy veteran, has been told to quit selling his popular word-of-mouth fruitcakes from his home because state law forbids the operation of an unregulated retail food business from one’s private home, said Fern Hastings, a senior environmental health specialist.

But let’s be reasonable. Who really eats fruitcake anyway?

And finally, as it turns out Santa Claus won’t need rabies shots after all.

It turns out that a large kitty that drew blood after biting a volunteer Santa Claus at a charity event in New Jersey earlier this month had been properly vaccinated.

The cat’s owner, Christine Haughey, came forward and produced vaccination records after learning that 47-year-old Jonathan Bebbington, the Santa, might have to receive the shots.

Bebbington said the cat, a mix between a house cat and a bobcat, bit his wrist and hand after becoming terrified because dogs were nearby at the Santa Paws photo event for an animal-rescue group.

I wonder if Santa’s reindeer are up-to-date on their shots.