Look before you sit, and more

Look before you sit

A Portland, Ore., man woke up to the sound of frantic scratching and found a rat trying to claw through the closed lid of his toilet. “I lifted the lid, and this furry little guy with beady eyes looked at me,” said Daniel Powers. He slammed the lid down and piled 20 books on top of it, and by morning the rat was gone. Rodent-control expert Randy Witten said he’s seen dozens of cases of rats coming through sewer lines into toilets. “Keep the toilet lid down,” Witten advises, “and look before you sit down.”

A late husband's Army memorabilia

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A Wisconsin woman was going through her late husband’s Army memorabilia in the attic when she came upon four hand grenades. “It scared the living daylights out of me,” said Caroline Cyganiak. “I didn’t know if they could explode.” A bomb squad found that the munitions were indeed live, and detonated them at a remote spot, with the detonations alarming people for miles around. “I’m sure that they would have damaged that house extensively,” said the local police chief. Cyganiak said she was baffled about why her husband, who died last year, was storing live hand grenades in the attic. “Today I went to the cemetery and I really reamed him out,” she said.

Food fight leads to assault charges

A 64-year-old North Carolina woman was charged with assault after she allegedly started a food fight at the salad bar during the Golden Corral restaurant’s early-bird special. Police said Polly Richards was livid about being cut off in line by Linwood Moore, 69, so she banged into him, slapped him, and then threw a plate of food that hit another patron. When police arrived to break up the fracas, they said, Richards told them, “Just take me to the f---ing jail, then.”