Take Down Your Pants, Pick Up The Ball And Bowl: Weird News & Oddities – Patch.com

March 16, 2024 ndowd

ACROSS AMERICA — Some people like to take off their clothes and do ordinary, mundane things, like ride a bike naked, work in the garden naked, or go to work naked or just be naked.

Now, there’s a bowling in the buff event called — and we didn’t name it, the Pittsburgh Area Naturists did — Balls Out Bowling. It’s also “toes in bowling,” and rental shoes, worn no one knows how many times, or by whom, are included in the price. Women can wear bottoms if they choose.
But enthusiasts of this activity aren’t trying to “strike it lucky,” if you know what we mean. Regardless of what you may be thinking, it’s not a bawdy bowling event.
A guy in Wisconsin sunk his teeth into McDonald’s signature Big Mac sandwich more than 50 years ago hasn’t eaten anything since — well, much of anything.
Don Gorske, now 70, promised his mother during the first seven years of his gastronomical romance with the sandwich that he’d eat one meal a day that didn’t have a Big Mac, and even she acquiesced, eventually telling him “If they haven’t killed you by now, go ahead.”
A Guinness World Record holder for eating more than 34,000 Big Macs during his lifetime, Gorske now limits his sandwiches to two a day and sometimes has a light snack at night. There have been times in the past that he’s eaten as many as nine a day.
Gorske walks about six miles a day, gets regular checkups, and his body hasn’t betrayed him. He’s not worried his record will be challenged and laughs at himself a bit. “Even if someone started now, I’ll be dead before they could match it,” Gorske once told Patch. “And they’re going to have to be obsessive-compulsive if they’re not going to eat anything else. ….”
Why? If you’re like a lot of us, you want to know what on Earth would possess themselves to dunk their head in a pickle bin?
Police in Glassboro, New Jersey, blame social media. The “young man” who stuck his head inside a convenience store’s pickles also filmed the not-so-harmless prank. Once contaminated, the pickled cukes had to be chucked.
The pickle-polluting perp turned himself in after police sought leads on the department’s Facebook page. Police pounced on puns, pronouncing their “dillight” at putting a padlock on the pickle probe.
“We certainly relish the community’s help,” an announcement began.
If you love a good mystery, this will get you rolling: How did three big round bales of hay end up on a paved recreational trail in Shorewood, Illinois?
These bales aren’t the same kind that gave rise to the phrase “bucking bales,” that is hefting bales higher in towering stacks. Bales that can be bucked are comparatively dainty square bales tied together with twine. The ones dotting the trail weigh about a ton each.
The bales were so precisely positioned that it had to be intentional. Authorities doubted that the farmer contracted to maintain the adjacent field had placed them there, and were more inclined to believe pranksters were behind the hay installation.
But how did they do it? There isn’t a human alive who can lift 2,000 pounds.
Alligators can’t help but be alligators and look at anyone in their habitat as prey. Join an alligator in the swamp and you get what you get. But in Florida recently, an alligator invaded the very human territory of a neighborhood and things got weird.
The alligator didn’t slither. It’s a common misconception that they’re slow moving creatures. Video captured by a homeowner showed it chasing the cart at full speed — and that could be up to 35 mph — and nearly catching it in its powerful jaws. How powerful? Alligators have a bite force of about 2,000 pounds per square inch.
Was the creature, ahem, teed off? This story is reminiscent of the surfboard-stealing sea otter in that the alligator was just being an alligator.
So, you thought your 6-foot fence made your property a fortress. Nothing wild is getting in here, you thought. Ha!
A Livermore, California, resident’s security camera captured video of a young mountain lion leaping over the fence and into the back yard early one recent morning. More video shows the young cat dodging traffic.
The usually elusive puma have been caught on video in Livermore a handful of times so far this year. It’s unclear if the mountain lion that leapt over the homeowner’s fence is a repeat visitor to Livermore, or if there are more of the usually solitary cats in town.
In the last installment of Weird News & Oddities, we told you about a doe with her head stuck in a jar. A similar fate befell Gracie, a dog in California who roamed around for a couple of weeks with a biscotti bucket stuck on her head.
Gracie survived the ordeal but needs a new home. Her owner is homeless and surrendered her to the shelter that rescued the hapless pup.