Hurricane I

I love reading the free paper on the train in the morning. Apparently, someone has decided that if the news is free, it should be more random. And maybe I found these funny because I'm exhaused from the weekend still, but I really think they are worth sharing.

Just Say Gnome
A woman stopped an intruder from entering her home by lobbing a garden gnome at him, police said Friday. Jean Callop was awakened early Tuesday morning by the sound of an intruder on the roof of her home in Wadebridge, England. "I grabbed the first thing that came to hand - one of my garden gnomes - and hurled it at him and hit him," she recalled. "I went back into the kitchen and found a rolling pin in case he came down. I didn't want to break another gnome."

U.S. Breeds World's Cutest Animal
The only whale-dolphin mix in captivity has given birth to a playful female calf, officials at Honolulu's Sea Life Park Hawaii said Thursday. The calf was born on Dec. 23 to Kekaimalu, a mix of a false killer whate and an Atlantic bottlenose dolphin. The as-yet unnamed wholphin is one-fourth false killer whale and three-fourths Atlantic bottlenose dolphin. Her slick skin in an even blend of a dolphin's light grey and the black coloring of a false killer whale, and she's jumbo-sized compared to purebred dolphins.

Winging It
A Colorado man reports he saved the life of one of his chickens by giving it mouth-to-beak resuscitation after it wandered into a tub of water. Uegene Safken said he also started yelling, "'You're too young to die!' Every time I'd yell at him, he'd chirp."

Nats' 'Screech' Comes Out Of His Shell
The Washington Nationals hatched their new mascot about 25 minutes before their victory over Arizona on Sunday: Screech, an oversized baby eagle.
The team dubbed Sunday "Kids Opening Day," and for the pregame unveiling, dozens of children gathered in the outfield alongwith several mascots from area college and pro teams - plus, for some reason, a giant Smurf.
Then out came a walking, cracked egg with yellow feet. Eventually the shell came apart to reveal Screech, with a yellow beak and a huge white head topped by a red Nationals cap. He also wears a white Nationals home jersey.

It occurs to me that it's funnier when these little blurbs are mixed in with real news about the Pope and the Senate in actual newsprint. I have a hard time believing that some editor doesn't know exactly what she's doing when she sticks these stories in the paper.

Unrelated: The head of the British School of Washington actually said "Cheerio" as he ended a phone call with me this morning. I never though anyone actually said that...