Shooting the lawnmower, Fossett's fake death?, Thumper to the rescue

last updated 8 January 2015

A Milwaukee man is facing felony charges after shooting his lawnmower with a shotgun. Keith Walendowski, 57, told police that he was perfectly entitled to shoot his Lawn-Boy mower at 9:30 a.m. because it wouldn’t start. “It’s my lawn mower and my yard so I can shoot it if I want,” he said. Authorities, however, disagreed, and charged him with disorderly conduct and possession of a short-barreled shotgun.

Steve Fossett may have faked his own death, says Britain’s News of the World. The wealthy adventurer disappeared last September while flying a light plane across the Nevada desert. Several exhaustive searches turned up no wreckage and no body, and Lt. Col. Cynthia Ryan of the U.S. Civil Air Patrol says there is growing suspicion that Fossett engineered his disappearance to escape money and marital troubles. Very few law-enforcement people, she says, buy the idea that Fossett died, “like the rest of the world has.”

An Australian couple are crediting their pet rabbit with saving their lives. Michelle Finn says she and partner Gerry Keogh were awakened at 7 a.m. by “the sound of a thumping rabbit.” They found their 6-month-old pet rabbit—known as Rabbit—charging around his cage, and their house on fire. All three escaped the flames, although both the house and Rabbit’s cage were destroyed. “It could have been a lot worse,” said Melbourne fire chief Mick Swift, “and without the rabbit it could have been a tragedy.”