# Absurd things you've seen lately
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/absurd-things-youve-seen-lately/516822
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
**Created:** [November 8, 2009, 6:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/absurd-things-youve-seen-lately/516822 "2009-11-08T18:50:36Z")
**Posts on this page:** 6
**Page:** 5
### Author:  [@La\_Beldame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/La_Beldame)
#### Post date: [November 17, 2009, 1:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/absurd-things-youve-seen-lately/516822/81 "2009-11-17T01:02:07Z")
Not personally observed but reported by a reliable witness: An enormous red-tailed hawk, on the ground, serenely disinterested in the squirrels scampering nearby in panicked madness. Inspects a talon with blase nonchalance, like a girl checking her manicure, and yoinks! reaches out and grabs a squirrel. Examines it, considers, and bites its head off. Then flaps those enormous wings and flies away.
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### Author:  [@Hypno-Toad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hypno-Toad)
#### Post date: [November 17, 2009, 3:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/absurd-things-youve-seen-lately/516822/82 "2009-11-17T03:11:04Z")
> [@Hampshire](#):
>
> Seriously, WTF is up with that? When I lived down in Naples, FL they’d do the same thing. Wait for you to be directly under them then just dive bomb you.
These seem to like hanging around the top of my door. I think there must be bugs up there to attract them. Sometimes, when I open the door they run to the nearest shade which is the open doorway. This is unfortunate for them since they often get squished by the closing door. I only find this out when their corpses fall out.
But one night, I heard my door knocker quietly tapping like the door was being jiggled, not like somone was using the knocker. I saw nothing when I looked out the peephole but could still hear the tapping. So when I opened the door I saw that a lizard was under the knocker and his movement was making it tap. He wanted to flee but couldn’t get his head out through the hole in the knocker because he had a huge roach in his mouth. I left him in peace to eat the insect.
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### Author:  [@salinqmind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/salinqmind)
#### Post date: [November 17, 2009, 3:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/absurd-things-youve-seen-lately/516822/83 "2009-11-17T03:21:17Z")
My mom just told me she was looking out the window the day after Halloween and saw a pumpkin rolling down the street. It was being pushed by a squirrel with his little paws as he walked behind it:) and she watched him push that pumpkin all the way down the block. Cutest thing she ever saw, wish she took a picture.
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### Author:  [@Simplicio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Simplicio)
#### Post date: [November 17, 2009, 5:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/absurd-things-youve-seen-lately/516822/84 "2009-11-17T05:29:28Z")
Every morning at almost exactly 8 AM, a guy passes under my window clapping his hands together and walking _backwards_ down the sidewalk. So far as I can tell, he cirumnavigates the whole neighborhood this way, which must take 15 to 20 minutes at least, every day.
At first I thought he must be some local homeless crazy, but my gf says she’s seen him go into the local grad-student housing village, so my new guess is that he’s a foreign student (he has a dark complexion, like someone from Central Asia, maybe) observing some religious obligation. I can’t imagine what religion it would be though. I keep meaning to get up in time to meet him outside and ask him about it, but so far, haven’t made it.
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### Author:  [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)
#### Post date: [November 17, 2009, 5:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/absurd-things-youve-seen-lately/516822/85 "2009-11-17T05:47:42Z")
> [@Haunted\_Pasta](#):
>
> 1. Last week, attempting to purchase a day spa gift certificate for my wife for her birthday (today- #40!), my credit card was declined. Called Citibank from right there. The problem apparently was that our last payment had come from a different account than usual. Well, yeah- it was a huge bill for a variety of travel and childbirth-related reasons. We don’t keep that much dough in my checking account, so we wrote a check on our credit union acccount. So, they froze my card because they got a check with my name on it, signed with my name, from an account with my name on it, to pay the bill on the credit card with my name on it. ???
>
> They got a credit union person on the line, who asked me a bunch of identifying questions that only an account holder should know. I answered them, they were satisfied, Citibank was then satisfied, and they unfroze my card. It was like Citibank knew it was me but needed to verify that the check was really from my account, so they pulled in a credit union rep who knew it was my account but needed to verify it was me. Weird.
There’s actually a reason for this. Let’s say I wish to use your account fraudulently on a very large purchase–so large it will draw the attention of account services whether it is within your limit or not, because it is so different than your usual buying pattern. I might first make a token payment onto the account, because when account services calls to see what is happening with your account they will often ask “What was the date & approximate amount of your last purchase?” The alert put on your card was meant to circumvent that.
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### Author:  [@Carl\_Corey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Carl_Corey)
#### Post date: [November 17, 2009, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/absurd-things-youve-seen-lately/516822/86 "2009-11-17T19:05:35Z")
> [@ryobserver](#):
>
> A live sparrow or a dead one??
>
> Either way, yikes. I’ve seen squirrels eating everything BUT meat around the Penn campus; thanks to the trash cans they have an infinite smorgasbord. I’ve a squirrel licking salt & grease from a roast-peanut wrapper, a squirrel licking jelly from a bakery paper that had held a donut (on a windy day; the wind kept wrapping the paper round the squirrel’s face), a squirrel with an apple core so big the squirrel couldn’t carry it and see where it was going and so kept putting it down to look around, and a squirrel with a whole chocolate-chip cookie sitting up and turning the cookie in its paws like a steering wheel. All on Locust Walk, except the apple-core episode, which was by the Biopond.
Well, it was dead by the time I saw it. 😉
I haven’t been to the biopond in over 10 years.
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