What Became Of Coyote Yanked From Aldi Shelves [Weird News & Oddities] – Patch

January 17, 2025 ndowd

Stop what you’re doing and picture yourself pushing a cart down around the Aldi store in Chicago. Nothing to see here beyond the price of eggs, right?

Wrong. So wrong. And so wild, as shown in a video you have to see to believe.
A police officer was prodding at something in the produce case with a broom handle as his partner leaned on his broom, ready to assist. The first cop poked around some more, then reached in and tugged hard, revealing first a bushy tail.
It was a full-grown coyote, right there in the Aldi store.
The coyote escaped and slid back into the refrigerated shelves somewhere near the lettuce.
Eventually, the coyote was captured without injury.
It’s unclear exactly how the coyote got into the store, but the staff at Flint Creek Wildlife Rehabilitation, where the coyote is resting, theorized it slid into the store through an open door trying to hide from people, then had to hide again once inside.
What’s next for the coyote?
2025 has so far been adventure-packed for Chicago wildlife. A fawn roamed around St. Casimre Cemetery for five days with his head stuck in a clear plastic jug with a few cheeseballs clinging to the bottom.
It was an alarming sight and situation those who tried to help feared would not end well for the young buck. A village showed up to help, including animal control officials from a couple of jurisdictions and dozens of ordinary citizens who didn’t want to see the young deer suffer.
Oak Lawn resident Jamie Stahulak told Patch she saw the fawn hitting his head against a post, apparently trying to jar the jug loose. The bottom cracked, but the jug remained intact.
As it turned out, people and all their drones, ropes and human ideas on what to do about the situation weren’t needed.
Last weekend, Stahulak found what she was looking for. Typing excitedly in an all-caps Facebook post, she announced, “THERE IT WAS! THE JUG!!! He did, in FACT, somehow get it off!”
Want to see magic in action? Read a complete stranger’s “deepest truth” and feel a connection?
That’s the appeal of the Traveling Diary Community, according to Kyra Peralte, the Montclair, New Jersey, woman who helped launch the project as a way to help women connect during the isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Passed through the mail from one woman to another, the now dozens of notebooks contain the stories, thoughts and art of women from 30 countries.
A woman in London said she’d finally mastered her mom’s recipe for a favorite dish from childhood. The first-ever piece of mail delivered specifically to a college student in India was the traveling diary. A grandmother in the United States wrote of longing for romance, and a young woman in Ukraine wrote of hearing bombs dropping.
“We’re creating something that can’t be replicated through a screen,” Peralte told Patch. “These are real stories from real people — shared in real time.”
2025 isn’t going to be quite as weird as 2024 when it comes to things like cicada tourism, cicada cuisine and other “cicada mania” because only one brood of 17-year periodical cicadas will tunnel through the soil and announce their arrival in a deafening chorus. Last year, two broods emerged.
Still, millions of these true bugs coming will out in late spring or early summer in 13 states.
It can be a lot for people who freak out when bugs fall from the tree or are put off by scientific findings they have impressive urine streams that they intentionally direct at predators and sometimes get into a fungus that turns them into sex-crazed “zombicadas.”
A 27-year-old elementary school janitor in New Jersey admitted in court this week that he contaminated items in the cafeteria with urine, feces and bleach, according to reports.
The man faces charges of tampering with food products, aggravated assault endangering the welfare of children and second-degree official misconduct.
Some parents thought the school district wasn’t transparent enough after investigators’ graphic accounts that included times the janitor allegedly rubbed his genitals on food that would be served to students.
One mom told a local news outlet that may explain why her child came home from school not feeling well. “How do I know that he didn’t eat the same bread that this man did these absurd things to?” she told NJ Advance Media. “There’s a lot of unknowns. I’m just disgusted.”