James Perry, with four DUI arrests in Florida, feared rejection if he tried to get a driver's license in his new home state of Connecticut and so pretended to be Robert Kowalski (the name of his neighbor in Florida), but a routine computer check revealed "Robert Kowalski" to be a Michigan sex offender, unregistered in Connecticut (Clinton, Conn., September).

Mr. Chance Copp, 15, who was on probation for arson and who feared testing positive for marijuana, submitted the urine of a relative, instead, only to find out later that that urine tested positive for cocaine (Chillicothe, Ohio, November).

The city of Bartow, Fla., amid complaints about stray chickens, repealed a 1922 ordinance that made it illegal to kill, capture or "annoy" birds (August).

The10th annual cockroach races (and "tractor"-pull) were held at the Indiana State Fair in August, with separate events for American roaches (on an oval track) and the stronger Madagascar hissing cockroaches (on a straightaway).

And among the less-publicized charges against the Russian oil giant Yukos (whose chairman, Russia's richest man, was arrested in October) was that a farm it owns in Siberia was illegally allowing rabbits to mate "unsystematically."
Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa, Fla. 33679 or Weird@compuserve.com
Copyright © 2001 by Chuck Shepherd

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