SIDELINES...

SERPENT CRUELTY

A woman in Ghana whose husband died after his pet python bit his tongue as he put it in his mouth has buried the python alive with her husband’s body. In social media footage, the widow is seen dancing round the coffin with the snake. Burying people with their favourite possessions is apparently a tradition in Ghana. Metro, 12 May 2021.

JUSTTOO LATE

Steven Smith, 41, who was adopted, spent decades searching for his birth mother. DNA tests finally led to a sister, who gave him an address for his mother, Daphne Morfydd Jones, in Bethnal Green, east London. Visiting the house the day before Mother’s Day, he found a pile of unopened letters on the doorstep and his mother’s body in the bathroom. “She’d been dead a while, heart attack apparently,” he said. Sunday People, 16 May 2021.

HAT-TRICK

A Kurdish boy, born in Duhok, Iraq, is the first recorded human to be born with three penises, a condition known as triphalis. The two additional penises were surgically removed with no adverse effect. < i>, 5 April 2021.

RATATATT

Jimmy Ames, 37, got the Chinese symbol for “love” tattooed on his arm to mark his 2017 wedding to Michaela, 34. It joined an existing Chinese tattoo from a lads’ holiday in Miami – of his birth year animal. Weeks later, the father of two, a business manager from Ipswich, remembered he was born in the year of the rat, so he now has “love rat” tattooed on his arm. Sun, 11 May 2021.

TARGET PISTOL

The Target superstore chain in the US has suspended sales of Pokémon and sports trading cards in its stores after a man drew a gun in a fight over trading cards at a branch in Wisconsin. During the pandemic, the sale of trading cards has rocketed, and values of rare ones have risen steeply. eBay says sales of Pokémon cards in the US shot up 574% and football cards by 1,586% between 2019 and 2020, with a rare Charizard Pokémon card selling for nearly $400,000. BBC News, 15 May 2021.