Some of the Weirdest Stories That Ever Appeared in The Times (Published 2019) – The New York Times

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Past Tense
Ghosts! Billygoats! Lazy men and thirsty thieves! All these stories — and more like them — as they were dutifully reported in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
The headlines you’ll see below are bizarre. But the articles, all of which once appeared in the pages of The New York Times, are even more so.
Did a ghost really express itself by moving a box of macaroni one day in 1898? How did a dog learn to ask for cake in German? And what brought on The Times’s obsession with the Loch Ness monster?
All these stories — and more like them — were dutifully reported, mostly in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
The most head-spinning stories are the ones about ghosts, poltergeists and sea serpents. Perhaps not surprisingly, the paranormal stories appear at the end of the 19th century, when the Spiritualist movement was strong. (There were articles about ghosts riding bicycles, stealing bread, eating apple pie and playing the flute, for starters.)
Stories of animals abounded, too. Dogs and cats, of course, were well-represented; but unusual pets — monkeys, beavers, bears, raccoons, squirrels, hummingbirds, cranes and the like — made the pages often. Also popular were workaday crime stories; the cheekier and more brazen the criminals were, the more newsprint they got.
It was a distinct era of news reporting, in topic as well as tone: Readers of the current iteration of The Times might find some obvious differences in how people and events are described. (We’ve also preserved the original typos.)
Below is a selection of those fantastical, amusing tales.
— Tina Jordan
Feb. 7, 1904
Commuter Carried Victim and Guilty Secret to New York.
EAST ORANGE, N.J., Feb. 6. — A New York business man who lives in East Orange and is something of a pigeon fancier recently lost several of his finest birds through the depredations of vagrant cats. A few days ago the losses became so heavy that he armed himself with a gun and lay in ambush one afternoon when he returned from the city.
After a wait he saw a lean cat emerge from the cote with one of his finest pigeons in its mouth. He fired, and the cat fell dead. In the early transports of his joy at having destroyed the thief he forgot that there was yet a task for him to perform, but soon recollected that the body must be disposed of. First he thought of digging a hole in the back yard and interring the cat therein, but then he trembled when he thought what the neighbors might think he was burying. At last a bright idea struck him.
“I’ll wrap the cat in papers and throw it off the ferryboat when I cross in the morning,” he promised himself.
So, with the bundle neatly tied, he took the train on the following morning. He got off the train and boarded the boat, and there he was greeted by a group of friends from whom he could not escape. He reflected that he might have to make embarrassing explanations if he threw the bundle overboard while he was with them, and he deferred the act until the boat landed, thinking he could easily cast it away in an ash barrel on the way to the office.
He passed several ash barrels on his way, but somehow or other some one always seemed to be gazing in his direction when he approached one, and once or twice he saw a watchful policeman. He recollected how unpleasant discoveries had been made in ash barrels, and he didn’t want to be arrested on suspicion. So he went all the way to the office and carefully locked the body in a closet, reflecting he could throw it overboard on his way home.
Going across the river that night he met some more sociable acquaintances, and the cat boarded the train with him as a result. He laid the package down beside him and tried to become absorbed in his paper, but that everlasting cat haunted him. When he reached his station he picked up a package and went home. Reaching there, he handed the bundle to the cook and, as indifferently as he could, told her to bury the cat in the back yard.
“Yes, Sir,” said the woman.
There were a few minutes of relief for the East Orangeite, but soon the cook reappeared.
“I guess there’s some mistake, Sir. This isn’t a cat in the paper. It’s a nice leg of mutton.”
The man had evidently picked up the wrong bundle on leaving the train, and he only hopes the other fellow who reached home with the dead cat doesn’t learn his identity.
Aug. 22, 1925
BROOKHAVEN, L. I., Aug. 21. — Mrs. Edward Raynor’s pet turtle, which came to her back door every day in Spring and Summer for four years to get pancakes made by a recipe known to her family for 200 years, has been kidnapped and advertised as lost in the current issue of The Brookhaven Advance.
Mrs. Raynor, like many other persons of Brookhaven, has made a pet of turtles, especially those which had the initials of her ancestors carved on their shells, and when this particular turtle which had a large “B” on his back, came to her house four years ago, she knew he had been the pet of the Bartow family, her ancestors, who settled here two centuries ago, and she took pains to make him welcome.
The turtle, a large fellow, immediately showed a fondness for the Bartow pancakes. At first he ate only what the Raynor cat left, but then, after Mrs. Raynor saw how much he liked them, she made up special batches of batter for him alone and set them out in a plate at the back door. Every morning he would waddle to the house to get them, except during strawberry blossom time, when Mrs. Raynor knew he was getting sustenance in strawberry beds.
This would continue until early Fall, when, with the first cold snap, the turtle would disappear somewhere into the earth to hibernate for the Winter.
But a week or so ago after the turtle had got his pancakes and waddled off again to whatever turtles do when not eating pancakes, Mrs. Raynor saw an automobile stop, a man reach down to the earth, lift something into his car and drive away.
The next day and the next, and the day afterward the turtle did not come to the Raynor backdoor for his pancakes. Then Mrs. Raynor inserted the following advertisement in The Brookhaven Advance:
LOST — If this notice comes to the man who took the turtle, will he please return him to Mrs. Edward Raynor, who fears he will miss his pancakes and also will never be able to find his way back to his Winter location?
“I want only to know that the turtle is well off,” said Mrs. Raynor today. “If the man doesn’t want to return him, I’ll be glad to send him a recipe for the pancakes. I’m afraid the turtle will miss them and be unhappy.”
March 15, 1904
Then Valente Learned He Had Buried the Wrong Woman.
Insists That Morgue Keeper Persuaded Him Against His Judgment as to Identity of Body.
Declaring that the city falsely notified him that his wife was dead, and saddled him with the expense of a funeral for a strange woman, Ignacio Valente, who lives at 311 East Sixteenth Street, has filed a bill for $250 against the city. The auditing bureau of the Finance Department now has it in charge.
Valente is an Italian, and about six weeks ago he quarreled with his wife, Angelico, over the way she cooked macaroni. As a result of the quarrel the wife left Valente’s home, declaring she would rather die than return. When Valente’s rage had cooled he became worried over his wife and started a search for her, reporting her loss to the police. He gave a careful description of the woman, and finally, on being notified that the body of a woman answering the description was at the Morgue, he went there, accompanied by his two-year-old daughter. He identified the clothing of the dead woman as belonging to his wife, but when shown the body, said he declared it had been changed.
“They all change after death,” he says the Morgue keeper declared.
“This woman was better looking than my wife,” Valente says he declared.
“Death beautifies them all,” the Morgue man is said to have replied.
Smothering his doubts, Valente says he had the body brought to his home, and then, in response to an old request made by his wife, got out the wedding dress used by Mrs. Valente and had the strange woman attired in it. The funeral was held and Valente footed the bills, he declared.
Notice of the event was published in the Italian papers, and the real Mrs. Valente, reading it, started poste haste for her home. Valente, on arriving home, discovered the real Mrs. Valente rummaging about for her wedding dress.
“What has become of it?” she demanded, when Valente entered.
“Why, I buried you in it three days ago,” Valente, in his surprise, replied.
Real trouble followed this, and, when Valente had satisfied himself it was his real wife who stood before him, and that he had buried the wrong woman, he could only restore peace by promising to buy his wife another wedding dress just like the one in which the strange woman had been buried.
Now he demands that the city pay him $100 which he spent for the funeral of the wrong woman, $40 for wages lost through grief and because of illness that followed the shock of finding his wife alive, and $110 for the bridal costume which he had placed on the corpse, and with which sum he desires to buy a new gown for the real Mrs. Valente. He asserts that he never would have accepted the body of the of the other woman, whose identity still is unknown, unless the Morgue keeper had forced him to believe that it was the body of his wife.
Sept. 14, 1899
At Last Killed His Owner by Tearing Off Burner While She Slept.
WASHINGTON, Sept. 13 — Alice Knott, twenty-three years old, of 803 Twelfth Street, came to her death yesterday through the instrumentality of her pet parrot, an evil-dispositioned bird, who was cordially detested by everybody except his mistress, but who seemed to have a strong affection for her. He would follow her from room to room, and was never happy except in her presence. He was generally regarded as a devil by the negroes and as a bird of ill-omen by the whites. His unpopularity was increased by an uncanny habit of pulling the tips off the gas burners with his strong beak and inhaling the gas until it stupefied him. He was a gas fiend, a feathered victim of the gas habit.
While his young mistress was sleeping yesterday the parrot took off the lava tip in her room and started on a gas debauch. This time there was no one near to avert the consequences of his deed. When Miss Knott’s relatives, alarmed by her long silence, broke open the door they found her dead. Her little murderer was found half-unconscious by the door. When he found himself succumbing to the gas and was not rescued as usual by his mistress, he realized that something was wrong, and had wit or instinct enough to make for the door and shove his bill as far as he could underneath it. He recovered, and while the Coroner was in the house the malignant little bird was caught trying to turn on the gas again.
March 14, 1909
Mumcra Not Sick, But Refuses to Get Up — Lives at Country Farm.
JERSEYVILLE, Ill., March 13. — The laziest man in the world lives in this village. His name is John Mumcra, and he has been in bed ten years because he is unwilling to comply with the rules of the Jersey County Farm, which say that every one living there shall rise at 5 A. M.
Mumcra is not sick. He eats regularly and is in perfect health.
“I am ready to hold up my hand and swear that he has kept his word,” said Superintendent Mourning of the Country Farm. “John has been in bed ten years, and he says he will stay there the remainder of his life.”
“He just lies there and looks at the ceiling, or rolls over once in a while and takes a nap. When he talks it is all about how foolish a man is to get up every morning when he knows he’ll have to go back to bed again at night.”
April 21, 1896
It Has Returned for Its Hand, Which Mr. Norton Dug Up.
The old town of Flatbush, now the Twenty-ninth Ward of Brooklyn, has a ghost, a Simon-Pure, sure-enough ghost, that nightly walks on East Broadway, near Nostrand Avenue, and stops at the house of Charles Norton to make inquiries for a hand that it lost there many years ago while its restless spirit was in the flesh. These visits are not fully appreciated by Norton or his wife, but it appears that Norton is to blame for the appearance of this ghost, because his ghostship was not heard of until Norton, while searching for gold in his cellar, dug up a hand that had lain undisturbed for years.
There was a ring on one of the fingers of the exhumed hand, and when this had been rubbed the ghost, in true Arabian Nights fashion, appeared, and as it failed to get instructions from Norton, it is now said that all it wants is the hand and ring and that thereafter it will cease worrying the descendants of the early Dutch in Flatbush.
The story that the old Dutchmen in the town tell of the ghost is that sixty years ago a belated traveler, with lots of gold in his belt, staid over night at the farmhouse of one Krug, a thrifty Dutch farmer.
Krug, when he heard of the large amount of gold that his visitor had about him, gave up his own room to the stranger and insisted that he should occupy it. The next day the visitor had disappeared, and when the family asked Krug about it he said the man had departed before daybreak. The bedclothing was also missing, and Krug accounted for this by saying he had burned it, because the stranger had just recovered from an attack of yellow fever.
Subsequently a man’s hand was found behind the bed. It had been cut off by Krug with an axe, it is said. When the hand was found, Krug disappeared, and the hand was buried.
Mrs. Norton, in speaking of this ghost and its uncanny visits, said the house was haunted, and continued:
“Everybody who has lived here since murder was done under this roof has had bad luck. One man who occupied the house about forty years ago left his wife and children and ran away with another man’s wife; another was a burglar, and when he was caught a whole lot of silverware was found buried in the cellar; another committed suicide. We’ve been here for six years now, and there has been nothing but sickness in our family. I don’t like to talk about these things — it sends a chill down my back.”
Norton, while hunting for the silverware supposed to be buried in his cellar, dug up two rusty Revolutionary swords and several pieces of ancient coin before the hand was unearthed.
December 25, 1913
Struggle Through Snow to Poor Boys’ Home Fatal to Mr. Heap.
DENVER, Dec 24. — Little crippled Wilbur Harris, 8 years old, is to have a merry Christmas, but his Santa Claus is dead. It was W. H. Heap, a philanthropist, who came to Denver from Paterson, N. J., because stricken with tuberculosis, who made possible the salvation of the Christmas myth for Wilbur.
Mr. Heap’s death came yesterday because ignored his physician’s order to remain in bed and walked several blocks through deep snow in the impoverished section of the city. He carried a sled, a train of toy cars, clothes, rubbers, candy, and many other presents for the destitute Harris family.
Mr. Heap learned that Mrs. Harris, in desperation, had told her little boy that there was no Santa Claus for poor children. He rose from his bed and in his automobile drove to the shopping district, where he himself made the selection of gifts for the family. The automobile could not penetrate the deep drifts of snow in the lower part of town, so Mr. Heap, staggering under his burden, walked to the Harris door, two blocks away. Leaving the gifts with the mother, he said:
“The sled will do the boy lots of good. I think if he can get out into the open, with plenty of warm clothes, he may be cured partially of his ailment. God’s open air is the best thing we have, anyway.”
A violent coughing spell seized the philanthropist, who was half carried to his motor car by Mrs. Harris. He was hurried home and specialists were summoned, but it was too late. He was dead.
June 27, 1937
LONDON, June 26. — It seems there is not merely one but there are two Loch Ness monsters, and they have produced a litter of baby monsters.
D.B. Wedge, a science teacher at the boys school attached to the Benedictine Abbey of Fort Augustus, which stands at the head of Loch Ness, told The Sunday Express that he had not seen the baby monsters but several of his pupils had and the baby monsters were three feet long.
Mr. Wedge deplored the “sensationalism” of reports and suggested the use of a diving bell to explore underwater caverns where, “fed by warm springs, the last survivors of prehistoric monsters still contrive to exist.”
Sept. 24, 1900
Johnson’s Desire to Vary His Diet Lands Him in Bellevue.
“Charles R. Johnson, Bangor, Me.,” registered at Jaeger’s Hotel, 561 Seventh Avenue, early in September.
“Will you have dinner, Mr. Johnson?” the clerk asked.
“Yes: send some pickles to my room.”
Later in the day the new guest ordered a course supper, two courses of pickles and one of crackers.
Johnson remained in the place until yesterday, eating nothing except crackers and pickles. He had frequent conference with the cook, who was the only person about the hotel whom he would notice.
Johnson went to the cook yesterday morning, telling him he had a new receipt for pickles which he desired to have made up. Opening his shirt Johnson disclosed a wallet hanging about his neck by a ribbon. Around it tape was rolled, the ends being held in place by red wax seals. These Johnson broke, and from the wallet he took a paper and began to read:
Take some cucumbers
When quite green,
From the garden
While unseen.

Soak them long
In salt mush.
Add your spices.
Watch them rust.

For same days
Let them lie;
Take them out.
In slices fry.

That’s a dish
Which one sings;
So good it is,
Is fit for Kings.
“Why, that’s nothing but ordinary pickles fried,” the cook told him.
At this Johnson became angry, and retired to his room. To the proprietor went the cook.
“He’s that crazy,” said the cook, “that he wants to spoil good pickles by frying them.”
The proprietor spoke to the policeman on post, Baxter, of the Tenderloin Station House. A Bellevue Hospital ambulance later took Johnson away, on the ground that he was afflicted with dementia. For a time he was unwilling to go, inquiring defiantly:
“Got any pickles over there?”
“Whole vats of them,” he was told.
Johnson climbed hastily into the ambulance.
Nov. 20, 1910
He’s a Setter and Demands Cakes in Good German, It Is Asserted.
BERLIN, Nov. 19 — The scientific sensation of the hour in Germany is the talking dog Don, a dark-brown setter belonging to a royal gamekeeper named Ebers at Thiershütte, near Hamburg. Don promises to become as celebrated an attraction as the horse Clever Hans, which startled the zoological savants of Europe eight years ago with his alleged mathematical feats.
Karl Hagenbeck, the world-famed animal dealer, has offered Don’s master $2,500 for the privilege of exhibiting the dog in the Hagenbeck outdoor menagerie at Hamburg. The dog’s vocabulary, it is said, already embraces six words.
His alleged elocutionary power came to light early this week as the result of reports from the United States that Prof. Alexander Graham Bell had succeeded in teaching a terrier to speak. It was declared that Germany not only possessed a dog with similar gifts but a dog which had been talking for five years, in fact, ever since he was six months old.
The story was first considered a joke, but Thiershütte all the week has been the Mecca of interested inquirers, who have come away convinced that Don is a genuine canine wonder. His callers included a number of newspaper men, who went to Thiershütte to interview the dog. The gamekeeper, Ebers, affirms that the dog began talking in 1905 without training of any kind. According to his owner, the animal sauntered up one day to the table where the family were eating, and, when his master asked, “You want something, don’t you?” he stupefied the family by replying in a deep masculine tone, “Haben, haben.” (“Want, want.”) The tone was not a bark or growl, it is declared, but distinct speech, and increased in plainness from day to day as his master took more interest in the dog’s newly discovered talent.
Shortly afterward, the story goes, the dog learned to say “Hunger” when asked what he had. Then he was taught to say “Küchen,” (cakes,) and finally “Ja” and “Nein.” And it is added that he is now able to string several of these words together in sensible rotation and will say “Hunger, I want cakes,” when an appropriate question is addressed to him.
The New York Times correspondent has caused inquiries regarding Don to be made through trustworthy authorities at Hamburg. He is assured that the dog is an unqualified scientific marvel.
Don’s owner is overwhelmed with applications from circus and music-hall managers, who are outbidding one another for the privilege of exhibiting the dog.
Sept. 23, 1898
Prayers Will Be Said To-day to Lay a Restless West Orange Spirit.
ORANGE, N. J. — Prayers will be said to-morrow morning in the Church of St. Michael the Archangel, in Matthews Street, this city, to lay a ghost which is driving the Italian residents of White Street, West Orange, into superstitious frenzy.
Ghostly rappings, hand-clappings, and other supernatural demonstrations have been heard and experienced since Monday in the store and rooms occupied by Frank Petro and family, who keep a grocery store in one end of a big frame tenement house just across the Orange line. It was in this house that Peter Christiano was stabbed by Lorenzo Corbo, an old organ grinder, at a New Year’s Eve party eight months ago. The neighbors assert that the ghostly demonstrations are caused by the restless spirit of the murdered man.
Father d’Aquilla, pastor of the Church of St. Michael, was called in last night. He prayed and sprinkled holy water in the rooms where the noises were heard. While he was in the house there were no demonstrations, but as soon as he had left, the family and neighbor aver, the noises were recommenced with redoubled frequency and violence.
Petro, who is a big, hearty man of intelligent appearance, says he does not believe in ghosts, but does not know what else to think. At midnight last night, he declares, he heard a noise as if the front doors of his store, which were fastened with a heavy bar set in staples, had been thrown wide open and the bar flung to the floor. He tried to get out of bed to investigate, but was held down by some invisible power, which pressed upon his chest and made it impossible for him to move. The “presence” remained for an hour, he says. The store doors were locked as usual this morning, but a box of macaroni, which had been placed upon a top shelf, stood on the floor in the middle of the room, with a handful of long straws lying across the top in the form of a cross.
A Times correspondent heard the noises to-night and made a thorough investigation of the rooms and cellar without ascertaining their cause. Samuel Christiano, a brother of the murdered man, who keeps a saloon on the next block, is convinced that the “presence” is that of his brother’s spirit. He says he went last night into the room where most of the noises are heard and begged the spirit to make itself visible. It did not, but as he rose from his knees after praying three unusually loud knocks sounded just under the place where he was standing.
Petro and his family say they have not slept for three nights. They went out to stay with friends to-night, and intend to move out of the house to-morrow. Tenants in the other end of the house have heard nothing of the noises.
June 18, 1932
Psychic Investigators Fail to Change It Into Young Man on Misty German Peak.
WERNIGERODE, Germany, June 17. — A group of eminent German and British investigators into psychic phenomena ascended tonight to the top of the Brocken, Germany’s magic mountain, and, in accordance with ancient rite, attempted to change a billygoat into a young man. Somehow or other it didn’t come off.
The failure of the experiment cannot be laid to any error in method, for the investigators observed every requirement set forth in the “High German Black Book.”
As demanded by the formula, the experimenters had the assistance of Miss Gloria Gordon of England, “a maiden pure of heart.”
They anointed the billygoat with blood and honey and the scrapings of church bells; they used the proper pine fire; they described a circle of the prescribed size; and they uttered every one of the Latin incantations stipulated for such goings-on.
Witches have frequented the Brocken ever since man can remember. The smallest boy hereabouts can tell you that.
Even Goethe, in his “Faust,” recognized that this was a place where no ordinary things happened. He wrote:
“The witches on the Brocken sail,
The shoot is green,
The stubble’s pale,
And high above them thrones Old Nick.”
As prescribed by the old rite, the goat was led into the magic circle by a silver cord. After it had been anointed a white sheet was thrown over it. All the proper abracadabra was intoned. Then, in a weird monotone, Harry Price, director of the National Laboratory of Psychical Research, London, boomed “One.”
With just the proper pauses he counted to ten.
A hundred or so spectators, huddled in overcoats to protect them from the swirling mists, looked on in breathless silence.
The maiden pure in heart whisked off the white sheet.
And there stood the billygoat.
The spectators applauded heartily and the investigators said they were satisfied.
— The Associated Press
July 19, 1903
Chicago Man, Chased by Police, Distanced Them, Stopped to Drink and Was Caught.
CHICAGO, July 18. — Frank Lowman ran swiftly to a child’s lemonade stand at 6,641 Perry Avenue, to-day, and asked Margaret Evans, aged seven, for a drink. As he gulped it down Margaret said, “Were you running a race?”
“Yes,” answered the customer.
“Did you beat?”
“Yes, I beat,” said the man, as he smiled at the little storekeeper, and drew from his pocket a long-bladed knife and stirred the second glass of lemonade.
“You’re awful hot, ain’t you?” again queried the little girl. “Did you run far? Is the lemonade cold enough?”
Just then two men turned the corner. They were the janitor of the flat building, at 6,505 Stewart Avenue, and a detective, who were pursuing the alleged burglar.
Lowman saw them and dropped the knife which he still held in his hand. He started to run, then stopped, for he had not paid for his drinks.
“Want some more?” queried the child. Lowman dropped several coins on the table as he sprinted across the street. Through a vacant lot, over a fence, and into an alley the man ran, closely pursued by the officer and the janitor, and soon another detective was in the chase.
The man was captured by Detectives Nelson and Horn after a chase of several blocks. He had been seen trying to pick a lock in the Stewart Avenue flat building with the long knife, and one of the detectives, with the janitor, had given chase. He had lost sight of his pursuers, when he stopped to drink the lemonade, and thought he had eluded them.
Jan. 12, 1927
FERGUS FALLS, Minn. — Gus Comstock, coffee-drinking pride of Minnesota, today again gulped his way into the national championship. Downing 85 cupfuls — eight-ounce size — in 7 hours and 15 minutes, Gus won back the title from H. A. Street of Amarillo, Texas, whose 71-cup record recently had bettered Comstock’s old mark of 62.
Comstock, a barber shop porter, was cheered by a crowd that jammed a hotel where Gus imbibed the coffee. The hotel paid the bill.
Near the end Comstock’s gulps were somewhat labored. When he stopped for a rest, a physician examined him and pronounced him in “pretty good shape” except for a slight fever, but the rest threw Gus off his stride and he quit short of the 100-cup goal he had set.
Comstock took his coffee with and without sugar and cream. In the first hour he consumed 15 cups of the beverage “straight.” All told he drank 21.25 quarts, more than five gallons of coffee.
— The Associated Press
March 11, 1929
Kill Canaries, Upset Goldfish, Bite Turtles and Police and Bring Call for Firemen.
Two monkeys made a shambles of Bartel’s animal store at 206 Fulton Street yesterday. They killed canaries, they dumped goldfish on the floor, they indiscriminately bit turtles and policemen. It was only after a two-hour battle by the fire department that they could be quieted at all. And then almost everything was smashed.
Patrolman Bronlevan and Sergeant Alexander Lilley arrived at the earlier stages of the rampage — just in time to see a small monkey cheerfully wring the neck of a valuable parakeet. They stopped, looked inside and saw nothing but broken glass and dead canaries. While Bronleven ran to a near-by fire station, Lilley forced the door.
Almost at once the sergeant got into trouble. He noticed that the cage of a large baboon was open and in his frenzied efforts to close it before the baboon escaped, allowed that worthy to grab his hand. While he was trying to break loose a small monkey threw goldfish. The sergeant, to the baboon’s regret, escaped.
One of the troublesome pair was captured almost at once; the other climbed on a high ledge and showered the policemen and firemen with bric-a-brac. It finally was captured when it foolishly became engrossed in trying to pull the tail feathers from a celluloid parrot. The assist was credited to Patrolman Bronleven.
With the monkeys in hand, the rescuing forces began picking the livestock which, liberated, was flying or crawling happily around the room. Goldfish which showed signs of life were dumped back in the aquariums and perplexed turtles were taken from their sward of broken glass and dumped after them.
Henry Bartels, the owner of the store, arrived from his home toward the end of the battle and said the damage would be several thousand dollars.
Compiled and edited by Raillan Brooks, Brian Gallagher, Tina Jordan, Amisha Padnani and Alexandria Symonds. Art direction by Andrew Sondern.
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