The O-town Scene - Oneonta, NY
Issue link: https://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/23825
R.o.B.S. A. American dream no more as home stripped KEENE, N.H. _ Daphne Norrod has learned the meaning of the phrase “buyer beware” the hard way. The 26-year-old first-time homebuyer’s dream house was stripped bare by the sellers before she took possession in early January. “They took everything,” Norrod said from her now-spartan dwelling on Valley Street. “And I mean everything.” Norrod signed a purchase agree- ment for the one-bedroom bungalow in December. She fell in love with the house’s little touches _ the hand-painted ceramic knobs on the kitchen cabinets, the stained-glass transom window, the her- ringbone brick front walkway. Today, all those charming details are gone _ along with all the appliances, window treatments, drawer pulls, door- knobs, light bulbs and “anything that wasn’t bolted down or nailed in,” Norrod said. A thin sheet of plastic awkwardly fills the gap where the stained-glass window once sat. Untidy holes mar the faces of the kitchen cabinets. A muddy path cuts across the front lawn where the bricks once rested. Norrod said she took her tale of woe to a lawyer to see if she could sue the seller of the house, but was told that the purchase agreement she signed did not include the items that were removed from the house before the sale. With no legal recourse, the nurse-prac- titioner said she is telling her story so that others will learn from her mistake. “Read the contract before you sign it. Take it to a lawyer,” Norrod advised. “I didn’t, and I paid the price.” The previous owner of Norrod’s house, Bruce Jerrault, now of Lexington, Ky., could not be reached for comment. “I hope he’s enjoying all that stuff he took,” Norrod said. “I hope it was worth it to him.” It’s hard to tell what’s true these days. Take a gander below, and guess if A. and B. are Real or B.S. (Answers at the bottom of the page.) B. No croc: Animal gulps phone, starts ringing KIEV, Ukraine _ Workers at a Ukrainian aquarium didn’t believe it when a visitor said a crocodile swallowed her phone. Then the reptile started ringing. The accident in the eastern city of Dnipro- petrovsk sounds a bit like “Peter Pan,” in which a crocodile happily went “tick-tock” after gulping down an alarm clock. But Gena, the 14-year-old croc who swallowed the phone, has hardly been living a fairy tale: He hasn’t eaten in four weeks and appears depressed and in pain. Gena noshed on the Nokia phone after Rimma Golovko dropped it in the water. She had stretched out her arm, trying to snap a photo of Gena opening his mouth, when the phone slipped. “This should have been a very dramatic shot, but things didn’t work out,” she said. Employees were skeptical when Golovko told them what happened. “But then the phone started ringing and the sound was coming from inside our Gena’s stomach and we understood she wasn’t lying,” said Alexandra, an employee who declined to give her last name as she wasn’t authorized to speak publicly. Since then, Gena has been refusing food and acting listless. He also won’t play with three fel- low African crocodiles, despite being the leader in the group. “His behavior has changed,” Alexandra said. “He moves very little and swims much less than he used to.” Doctors tried to whet the crocodile’s appetite this week by feeding him live quail rather than the pork or beef he usually gets once a week. The quail were injected with vitamins and a laxative, but while Gena smothered one bird, he didn’t eat it. Dnipropetrovsk chief veterinarian Oleksandr Shushlenko said the crocodile will be taken for an X-ray next week if he continues to refuse food. Sur- gically removing the phone would be a last resort, he said, since incisions and stitches usually take at least three weeks to heal in reptiles and the proce- dure is dangerous for the animal and the vets. “Everything will depend on where the foreign body is located,” Shushlenko said. “We don’t have much experience working with such large animals.” The crocodile in “Peter Pan” with the ticking stomach was on the hunt for Captain Hook after getting a taste for the pirate’s flesh from eating one of his hands. But luckily for Hook, he could always hear the crocodile coming. Golovko has about as much optimism for re- trieving her phone as Hook did for retrieving his hand. But she does want to get back the phone’s SIM card, which holds her precious photos and contacts. Jan. 27, 2011 O-Town Scene 21 A. is B.S., by Emily Popek; B. is real. Poor guy.