WON’T GET FOOLED AGAIN
Fake eyeballs, a bogus US embassy and a stuffed toy tiger on the loose in Scotland
“I was worried it was going to eat all my cows...”
Bruce Grubb, 24, was hosting a housewarming party at his new farm near Peterhead in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, on 3 February when he took a break to check on his livestock and was shocked to find a tiger in his dimly lit shed full of pregnant cows. “I was worried it was going to eat all my cows before police managed to shoot it,” he said. Six cars of armed police officers soon arrived to surround the barn, while the Highland Wildlife Park near Kingussie, around 100 miles away, was asked to check on its two tigers. After a standoff of about 45 minutes, Grubb and the marksmen became suspicious when the tiger seemed to have remained perfectly still. Grubb drove up to it in his truck and found that it was a life-sized stuffed toy. Officers described the incident as “a false call made with genuine good intent”. They told Grubb they wanted to keep it as a mascot. (Aberdeen) Evening Express, 5 Feb; sacbee.com, 6 Feb; D.Telegraph, 7 Feb 2018.
On 25 September last, a resident of Crestmead, south of Brisbane, Queensland, called Australia’s national terrorism hotline to report a pressure cooker left on a footpath. The bomb squad carefully approached the appliance, which was emitting a strange smell. It turned out to full of crabs. Police were unable to confirm if the crabs were cooked or uncooked. (Queensland) Courier Mail, 26 Sept 2017.
On 9 January, police received a call from a concerned motorist who had noticed what looked like a dead body in a field close to Junction 11 of the M56, near Runcorn in Cheshire. Officers quickly mobilised to the scene, and spent an hour searching for the man. When they finally tracked him down, they found he was a Druid who had been doing some yoga in the field. The man then went on his way. manchestereveningnews.co.uk, 9 Jan 2018.
Four Indian men, including a police driver, tried to con two gullible fellows into buying a wish-granting djinni (genie). Tapas Roy Choudhury got a call from a friend that there was a
djinni in a bottle for sale, and Choudhury told another friend, Basudeb Kundu. The price was reportedly a million rupees (roughly £11,000). Choudhury and Kundu went to a hotel, where they were met by four men. All of them got into a car with a police sticker on it. The would-be vendors, who weren’t named, showed off a soda bottle and claimed that the djinni was inside. Choudhury told them he didn’t actually have the money, whereupon they robbed the cash Choudhury and his friend had on them, which amounted to 600 rupees (£6.66). Somehow, Choudhury alerted a friend about what was happening, and police arrested the four suspects, but they were soon released on bail. PTI (Press Trust of India) via rare.us, 21 Jan 2018.
• A woman in Bishop’s Cleeve, Gloucestershire, called the RSPCA to rescue a ‘cat’ trapped under her wardrobe – only to be told by inspector Jack Anderson that it was a pair of slippers. She had put out bowls of food to coax the intruder from its hiding place. Metro, 16 Jan 2018. •
Two men were charged with offensive behaviour after fake eyeballs were thrown on a football pitch during a match involving a player with one eye. Dean Shiels, 32, was playing for Dunfermline in a home game against Falkirk on 2 January when the incident occurred. He lost an eye at age eight after an accident. Metro, 31 Jan 2018.
• The owners of a hamster called Dusty wrongly assumed their pet was dead and placed it in a wheelie bin. Refuse collectors were surprised to find the small black and white creature crawling out of the top of the bin. They took it back to their depot and made a temporary home for it. The RSPCA said: “Wild hamsters hibernate during the winter, but wake up periodically to feed. In a warm house, artificial light and temperatures usually suppress this hibernation, which means it isn’t common for domestic hamsters to hibernate. However, if your hamster is kept in a colder part of the house, it could go into hibernation during the winter and should be left alone.” D.Telegraph, 10 Feb 2018. •
Late last year, news broke that for a decade Ghana had had two US embassies, one real and one fake. The fake, complete with a US flag outside, was a moneymaking scam that sold a range of false ID documents, fake visas and fraudulently obtained real visas. Possible giveaways included the fact that the “embassy” was in a shabby two-storey building with a wiggly tin roof, and that it was staffed by Turks pretending to be Americans. The organised crime ring that ran it even advertised it on billboards across West Africa. <i> 29 Dec 2017.
• Andy Sampson, 54, and Paul Adams, 58, had been metal detecting in a field in Suffolk when they found 54 ancient Roman ‘gold’ coins with pottery, which they believed at the time could have been worth up to £250,000. “We had six emperor Nero coins,” said Sampson, “and we knew they were worth £16,500 each.” The pair, who had been metal detecting for only a year, had been given permission to sweep the field where Sampson had previously found a Roman coin. The finds were spread out along a 30ft (9m) long furrow. Sampson took the coins back home and showed them to his neighbour, himself a veteran detectorist and member of the Suffolk Archæological Survey, who immediately said “they’re not real – there’s something wrong with them”.
The pair made some inquiries and found out the farm was used as a filming location during the summer for the BBC Four comedy Detectorists, starring Toby Jones and Mackenzie Crook (who also wrote and directed the series). It emerged the production crew had filmed a tractor pulling a plough through the ground, unearthing the coins as it went. Not all of them had been retrieved, and they were the ones Sampson and Adams had found. They said they had finally “got over” their huge disappointment and it had not put them off the hobby. BBC News, D.Telegraph, D.Mil, 31 Jan 2018.