The Milwaukee Post

18 • Milwaukee Post • August 16, 2013 NEWS OF THE WEIRD BY CHUCK SHEPHERD Lead story – Roach motel ■ At age 20, Kyle Kandilian of Dearborn, Mich., has created a start-up business to fund his college expenses, but it involves a roomful (in the family home) of nearly 200,000 cockroaches. The environmental science major at University of MichiganDearborn breeds species ranging from the familiar household pests, which he sells on the cheap as food for other people's pets, to the more interesting, exotic Madagascar hissing roaches and rhino roaches, which can live for 10 to 15 years. (Kandilian told the Detroit Free Press in July that of the 4,000 cockroach species, only about a dozen are pests.) Why not choose a more conventional "pet"? Because "(m)ammals smell," he said. (Missing from the Free Press story: details on the likely interesting initial conversation between Kyle and his mother when he asked if he could have 200,000 cockroaches in the house.) Can't possibly be true ■ The intersection of West Gateway Boulevard and North Congress Avenue in Boynton Beach, Fla. (pop. 60,000), is nine lanes wide, busy even at 11 p.m. on Sunday night, as it was at that time in July when a 2-year-old girl darted across, a combination of good fortune and sometimes-rare Florida driver alertness allowing her safe arrival on the other side without a scratch. "It's a miracle," said Harry Scott, who witnessed it. "I'm telling you the truth." Mom Kayla Campbell, 26, was charged with felony neglect, as she appeared "oblivious," said police, to the child's absence from home. ■ An unnamed restaurateur from Nagoya, Japan, has filed a lawsuit against an affiliate of the country's largest organized crime syndicate, Yamaguchi-gumi, demanding a refund of "protection" money she had been paying for more than 12 years (in total, the equivalent of about $170,000). The affiliate, Kodo-kai, burned down a bar in 2010, killing people, in a similar protection arrangement that went bad, and the plaintiff said she, too, was threatened with arson when she decided to stop paying. According to an expert on Japanese "yakuza," a relative of one of the victims of the 2010 fire may also sue Kodo-kai. Unclear on the concept ■ In June, following his guilty plea in Corpus Christi, Texas, to possession of child pornography, Jose Salazar, 70, offered to perform public service to reduce the 12-year sentence a federal judge had handed him. Salazar said he "had a lot to offer society," an Associated Press story said, and could be "useful" in mentoring children. ■ At Atherstone, England's, Twycross Zoo, a program is under way to try to teach quarter-ton giant tortoises to speed up. An extended outdoor pen had been built for Speedy (age 70), Tim, 40, and Shelly, 30, but that meant it took a longer time to round them up for bed at the end of the day. The Leicester Mercury reported in June that zoo officials were trying to use the lure of food to get the tortoises to significantly improve their way-under-1mile-per-hour gait. Inexplicable ■ Tina Marie Garrison, 37, and her son Junior Lee Dillon, 18, of Preston, Minn., were charged in June with stealing almost $5,000 worth of gopher feet from the freezer of a gopher trapper in Granger, Minn., and selling them for the local offered bounty of $3 per pair. Garrison, Dillon, and the victimized trapper were friends, and it was not clear why the thinly populated gopher-foot market would not have deterred Garrison and Dillon. ■ Louann Giambattista, 55, a 33-year-veteran American Airlines flight attendant, filed a lawsuit against the company in July alleging that it had subjected her to baseless hassles because of co-workers' accusations that, argued her attorney, were wrongly "making her out to be a nut." One of the accusations was that she was "hiding rats in her underwear (and pantyhose) and sneaking them onto planes" based apparently on Giambattista's hobby of raising pets at home. The airline has allegedly subjected her to enhanced security measures for more than a year, allegedly causing her post-traumatic stress disorder and "debilitating anxiety." People with issues ■ (1) Gerard Streator, 47, pleaded guilty in June in Waukesha County Court to public lewdness and placed on probation after his arrest last year of going through the motions of intercourse with a discarded couch on a public street. An off-duty police officer thought initially that he had caught a couple, but on closer inspection, he realized Streator (who was aroused) was alone. (2) The day before, in Ostersund, Sweden, a 35-year-old man was arrested after a surveillance camera revealed him to be the one who repeatedly punctured Per Edstrom's bicycle's tires and who that evening was seen sitting on the bicycle pleasuring himself. Undignified deaths ■ (1) A 28-year-old man was accidentally killed in Shelby, N.C., in April. Police say he had trespassed on a salvage lot at 5 a.m. and was underneath a wrecked car trying to steal a catalytic converter when the jack slipped, and the car fell on him. (2) A 42-year-old man was shot and wounded while on his front porch in Antioch, Calif., on Friday morning, June 28. He was treated and released, but then walked out on his porch the next morning and was again shot, this time fatally. Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa, FL., 33679 or by email to WeirdNews@earthlink.net. When he first went blind and was learning his way we padded the sharp corners , on coffee tables, etc. They sell furniture pads for childproofing that work very well for pets, too. We placed a mat under his food and water bowls. If he feels the mat, he knows he is close to the bowl and isn't searching for it and spilling food and water. Hope this helps! – Linda in Vermont HINTS FROM HELOISE BY HELOISE Adjustments for a blind dog Dear Heloise: My dog recently went blind, and our family had some adjusting to do. I wanted to share a few hints with you and your readers that might help someone else who's going through this. We talk to our dog a lot more now. We want him to know that we are in the room and that he isn't alone. Always make sure you talk to pets before touching them so you don't scare them when they aren't expecting it. Leave the furniture where it is. He has learned where the furniture is and can move around it. If you change the location of a piece of furniture, pets could lose their way and bump into it. When our previous mini schnauzer, Savvi, went blind due to diabetes, I put some of my perfume on a cotton ball and dabbed it around her doggie door to help her find it. She managed very well after only a few days. However, when the carpet was cleaned, her "scent trail" was gone! So we walked several times through the house, and she was right at home finding her way . – Heloise Send a great hint to Heloise, P.O. Box 795000, San Antonio, Texas 78279-5000 or email to heloise@Heloise.com. Answers on Page 23

• Cover