Rats drank 200k gallons of illegal booze we were meant to guard...
...and other unlikely excuses
IT was a tall tail which left officials smelling a rat.
According to police officers charged with guarding 200,000 gallons of confiscated alcohol, the reason for its abrupt disappearance recently was simple - the rats drank it. After nibbling through the caps, of course.
The state government in Bihar, India, which has banned the sale of alcohol in a bid to cut crime and poverty, said it was the “most absurd claim that has ever been made” and believe black market sales are more likely than whiskery drunks making off with the loot.
“How can that much alcohol be drunk by the rats?” asked legislator Devesh Chandra Thakur. Two senior officers have been arrested. But it is not the first excuse to give “the dog ate my homework” a run for its money...
A strike of very bad luck
The coach of North Korea’s woman’s football team reckons lightening strikes not just once, but 11 times.
After North Korea lost 2-0 to the US in their first game of the 2011 Women’s World Cup, he had to think faster than light to excuse their lacklustre performance.
The explanation was simple – the entire team was struck by lightning the month before and they just had not been the same since.
It’s in the way he walks
Republican senator from Idaho, Larry Craig, blamed his 2007 arrest in a Minneapolis airport toilet for alleged lewd conduct – soliciting sex by playing footsie with an undercover officer in the next stall – on having “a wide stance when going to the bathroom.”
The excuse did not seem to wash. He retired the following year.
I was rehearsing
After Winona Ryder was first caught shoplifting in 2001, she told the police officer who arrested her that she was practising for a part.
“At one point she was explaining that she was getting in character for a role as a kleptomaniac,” the arresting officer told her trial, after she attempted to steal clothes from a store in Los Angeles. “She wanted to see what it was like to shoplift.”
11 shades of grey
In April 1996, Manchester United were playing so badly against Southampton Sir Alex Ferguson came up with a half time move that could act as a genius excuse. He made his team change out of their grey shirts. The excuse has gone down in sporting history.
“The players couldn’t pick each other out,” Ferguson later explained. “They said it was difficult to see their team-mates at distance when they lifted their heads.”
A saucy plan
In 2013, police discovered a known sex worker waiting inside a car. The car’s owner, Muhammad Ikhlaq, was nearby getting cash from a cashpoint. When questioned, he told officers the money was for tomatoes and the woman was going to show him a good place to buy them. “I’ve heard some excuses before, but in the 10 years that I have been a police officer I have never heard of a kerb crawler covering up his crimes by claiming to be buying tomatoes,” Walsall police’s PC Stacey Paterson told the BBC. Ikhlaq was found guilty of soliciting.
It was drugs, not me
UKIP was having none of it after the resignation of their candidate Kerry Smith in 2014. They leapt to his defence, explaining the candidate for South Basildon and East Thurrock, who had described gay people as “f ****** disgusting old poofters” had been addled by the prescription drugs he had been taking.
Patrick O’Flynn, economic spokesman for UKIP, said the remarks were made in “a phone call some time ago while he was on sedatives, by his own account, not really speaking [or] thinking rationally”.
Pants on fire
A Zambian tennis player, Lighton Ndefwayl, once explained his loss to fellow countryman Musumba Bwayla by reportedly insisting: “He beat me because my jockstrap was too tight and because when he serves he farts, and that made me lose my concentration, for which I am famous throughout Zambia.”
I’m Batman – not robbin’...
In 2011, a man in Pittsburgh, USA, wearing a black and gold tank top tried to steal a Chevrolet Impala.
Unfortunately for him, the car’s owner was a police detective, who pulled out his gun and arrested him on the spot – and the thief had no sleeve up which to hide his great excuse.
Instead, because Batman movie The Dark Knight Rises was being filmed 250 miles away, he said he was involved and taking the car was part of the story. Micah Calamosca, 21, was arrested.
I tripped
Millions around the world witnessed Luis Suarez bite Giorgio Chiellini at the 2014 FIFA World Cup – in fact, he’d done it before.
But he still had a great excuse at the ready. He simply claimed he just fell on Chiellini teeth-first. Unlucky.
It was a full moon
After drinking a lot of vodka, a man from Ohio in the US started a number of fights.
A few hours later, he was found passed out inside a trailer filled with knives and swords.
You would think there would not be much getting out of it, but when Thomas Stroup was asked about the 2011 incident, the 20-year-old told Lorain County officers he had been “scratched by a wolf ” during a trip to Germany and since then “goes on the attack when the moon’s out”.
In the end he was charged with underage consumption of alcohol.
Splitting hairs
In 2006 when Liberal Democrat MP Mark Oaten was caught hiring a male prostitute with whom he had had a longterm affair outside his marriage, he blamed a midlife crisis – and on going bald. “I became more obsessed by its disappearance,” he said of his receding hair. “It was a public sign that my youth had ended.”
I was only trying to help...
After being arrested for stealing sunglasses and other items from students’ cars outside a school in Mississippi, in 2014, Lisa Carol Roche, had all the answers. She was actually doing her civic duty. She was searching for members of IS. Unfortunately she did not find any. Roche was taken to jail.
RAIL commuters were delayed during rush hour yesterday after a group of baby llamas wandered on to the track.
Services from Kent to London were forced to slow down after around eight llamas escaped from a farm. The animals were spotted on tracks between Hildenborough and Sevenoaks, Kent, at around 8.39am.
Operators announced the reason for the hold-up, affecting Southeastern services from Tunbridge Wells to London Bridge, over the Tannoy. The incident caused 30-minute delays as trains slowed down to avoid collisions. Passenger Tracey Davis, 28, said: “We couldn’t believe it. We’re used to leaves on the line delaying trains. What will they come up with next?” A spokesman for Southeastern said: “Network Rail warned us that six to eight llamas were seen near the line around Hildenborough. “We’re not sure how they got there or where they were going, but we can assume they weren’t trying to catch the train.” The British Llama Society says there are from 2,000 to 4,000 of the South American animals in the UK.