It wasn’t all bad
■ Staff at an Iowa cemetery noticed that their resident goose, Blossom, seemed lonely after her companion passed away last year. So general manager Dorie Tammen took out a personal ad in the local paper in search of a partner for her “youthful, adventurous, and lively” goose. A nearby couple quickly responded: Their widower goose, Frankie, was similarly lonely after the loss of his mate. Tammen arranged a “blind date” for the birds on Valentine’s Day, and since then, they’ve spent nearly all of their time together.
■ Orthopedic surgeon Felicity Fishman knows that getting an operation can be a scary experience, so when her young patients wake up from one, they’re greeted with a special surprise: a custom, hand-drawn piece of artwork on their cast. “It was about giving them a little bit of control,” Fishman said. After Fishman is done repairing a joint or carefully inserting a metal plate, she gets to work on her patient’s cast, calling out for different colored markers in the same way that she would for a scalpel or scissors. And she takes requests from children: So far, she’s created animals, snowmen, princesses, and even an intricate anime character. “I’m up for drawing anything,” Fishman said.
■ Minnesota Vikings wide receiver K.J. Osborn was on his way home from a workout this month when he and his Uber driver came upon an accident: A car had violently slammed into the pillar of an overpass. Although the car was ablaze and at risk of exploding, the pair joined two other bystanders to pull the injured driver—who turned out to be Nelson Thomas, a onetime contestant on MTV’s The Challenge—out of the wreckage. Thomas is expected to make a full recovery; he said was eager to meet his rescuers and thank them in person: “They risked their own lives to save mine.”