An eight-year-old German schoolboy who wanted to complain to his mother about being sent out of class took his teacher’s car and crashed it, police said.

The boy, banished from class for disrupting a lesson, pinched the 40-year-old teacher’s car key when she was not looking and managed to start up her compact car, accelerating and putting the vehicle into first gear.

“The little fellow drove for about 25 m (yards) before crashing into a Volvo, also parked in the car park outside the school,” a police spokesman in the eastern German city of Zwickau said on Thursday.

The boy later told police he had wanted to drive home to his mother to complain about the teacher sending him out of class.

Police estimated he caused 8,000 euros ($10,340) of damage.

~ Reuters

A man who attempted to settle an overdue bill with a picture of a spider, leading to a surreal email exchange with his utility firm, has become an internet sensation.

The employee, named as Jane Gilles, rejected the drawing but agreed to return it in an email attachment. But Mr Thorne was not satisfied. “Are you sure this drawing of a spider is the one I sent you?” he wrote. “This spider only has seven legs and I do not feel I would have made such an elementary mistake when I drew it.”

But after withdrawing his allegation and conceding he may have sent a seven-legged spider, he added an extra leg to the picture and again offered it as payment. “I trust this will bring the matter to a conclusion.”

~ Telegraph

An unusual clash between a 6-foot (1.8m) alligator and a 13-foot (3.9m) python has left two of the deadliest predators dead in Florida’s swamps.

The Burmese python tried to swallow its fearsome rival whole but then exploded.
The remains of the two giant reptiles were found by astonished rangers in the Everglades National Park.

The rangers say the find suggests that non-native Burmese pythons might even challenge alligators’ leading position in the food chain in the swamps.

~ BBC News

A manhunt is under way in western Germany for a convicted drug dealer who escaped by mailing himself out of jail.

The 42-year-old Turkish citizen – who was serving a seven-year sentence – had been making stationery with other prisoners destined for the shops.

At the end of his shift, the inmate climbed into a cardboard box and was taken out of prison by express courier. His whereabouts are still unknown.

~ BBC News

A male Japanese air force major caught naked while shopping for women’s underwear has been suspended from his duties for 10 days, a spokeswoman at his base said on Friday.

The man, on his way home from a late-night farewell party for a colleague in early September, stripped off his clothes behind a convenience store before going in and buying panties and pantyhose.

“He had just his wallet and his shoes on him,” said the spokeswoman from the Matsushima air base in Miyagi, northern Japan.

“He thought it would be funny if he went into the store stark naked, that it would surprise people.”

There was no one else in the store but the store clerk, who called the police shortly after the man left the store. Papers were filed against him on suspicion of indecent exposure.

Reuters

A 9-year-old boy was caught driving his parents’ car alone after police received a report about an unmanned vehicle moving down the street.

The boy took the car, which had been parked with the key in the ignition at his family’s home in Gifu, central Japan, on Monday to visit his grandmother’s house, a police spokesman said.

“I learned from my father’s driving and at game arcades,” Kyodo News quoted the boy as telling police.

The police received a call from a passer-by who reported having seen a driver-less car running down the street, as the boy was apparently too short to be seen from outside the vehicle, the spokesman said.

The police found the car in a convenience store parking lot, after the pint-sized motorist had lost his way. They warned the boy’s parents to keep a closer eye on their car, the spokesman added.

~ Reuters

A blackbird is making a family’s life hell by mimicking the sound of an ambulance siren outside their window at 5am every morning.

Fed-up Nathan Talbot, 39, his wife Alison, 37, and their two children, Joshua, 11 and Sophie, 10, have been woken by the sound of the emergency siren at the crack of dawn for the past three months.

The family, who live near Weston-Super-Mare general hospital in Somerset, believe the blackbird has learned to perfectly mimic the noise of passing ambulances.

The creature, which sits in a tree in the back garden or on the roof of their three-bedroom house, keeps the noise up until 8pm every single day.

And as if that wasn’t enough the bird has also learned to imitate Nathan’s mobile phone ring tone and a car alarm.

~ Daily Mirror