Miscellany: Birds

Marietta, Ga. was visited by a plague of martins. The city council ordered $50 worth of owls (several dozen) in crates from Florida. By mistake they were sent to Marietta, Ohio. By the time they finally arrived in Marietta, Ga., the martins had migrated south.

Indignant

In Coquille, Ore., Walter Smith was in court on his 43rd charge of drunkenness. Judge Frank Leslie gave him the choice of pouring 20 quarts of confiscated whiskey down the sink or going to jail for 30 days. Indignant, Walter Smith went to jail.

Hug

In Brooklyn, N. Y., Mrs. Mary Felecia ran out on a busy intersection, embraced Patrolman John Rom, cried, “I love you,” embarrassed Patrolman Rom, tied up traffic. Said she at the police station: “When I see a man in uniform I just get the yen to hug and kiss him.”

Matthew

In a one-room shack on the Meadowbrook Farm near Merced, Calif., Mrs. Ola Harwell, 26, was reading the Bible to her husband Woodrow, itinerant cotton picker, and her two small sons: “Wherefore if thy hand or thy foot offend thee,” read Mrs. Harwell from the Book of Matthew, “cut them off, and cast them from thee. . . .” “Amen,” said her family. She shut the Bible with a snap. “My right eye and my left hand have sinned,” she said. She took a pair of scissors, went to the woodshed, stabbed at her right eyeball till she gouged it out. She took a heavy ax, put her left hand on a concrete pipe, chopped at it viciously. At the third blow it fell to the ground. Ola Harwell walked back to the house, got into bed.

Graves

In Proviso township, near Chicago, Oscar Atkins, who had lived 17 days in a grave five feet deep in a vacant lot, clambered up, peevishly took down his sign MAN BURIED ALIVE, Ten Cents a Look. In a vacant lot two blocks off, Mrs. Marion Weaver had also dug a grave, had put up a sign GIRL BURIED ALIVE, was taking away all of Oscar Atkins’ customers. Two miles away, Lester Mclntyre, buried alive 21 days, clambered out when it started to rain. Said Lester McIntyre: “My grave leaks.”

Crown

In Rome, the Messaggero reported that the golden crown of deposed Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie, studded with 718 diamonds, had been placed on sale by a London jeweler for $2,500. “A great bargain at such a small price,” exclaimed the Messaggero, “provided the diamonds are not made of glass.”