So, what strangeness has appeared in your area recently?
I was at a gun shop doing an FFL transaction. An old man hobbles in and asks for a leather sheath for a knife. “It’s a really big knife…I need one that will fit it.” Proprietor shows him a (gigantic) sheath, and customer purchases it, saying it’s “just the right size.” While ringing it up, customer explains his situation. “These guys who are my neighbors keep ganging up on me…and I need to defend myself. I can’t carry a gun, because I’m afraid that they’d just take it and use it against me because I’m so old.” (Uh…and they would be less likely to do that with a knife?) Customer continues: “They have a pit bull and they keep making it attack me. So the next time that dog comes at me, I’m going to chop its head off with my knife. It’s a big old knife, like a miniature machete.”
I live on a boat. Last Friday a womans body floated by.
It wasn’t recently, but I saw a woman walk into a Duane Reade with a cat on her shoulder. She also had a dog (on the ground). The cat was walking around on her back, letting the store employees pet him, while she explained that he liked to go out shopping.
Sunshine in Minnesota. It’s gone now though. I think - I’ve been trapped in the office all day.
I have what appears to be dog turds formed around the fine branches of one of the bushes in the yard. They’re high up…over my head. I’m a little afraid to investigate. It’s just too weird.
About two weeks ago I was sitting in a Starbucks and a woman walked in with a fully grown standard poodle. The guy behind the counter had to explain repeatedly why she could not have her poodle in Starbucks with her.
I saw something yesterday, and I’m not sure what it is. It was turning off of a busy road and scared me a little because it looked like a toy with no business on public roads.
You know how tiny Smart cars are, right? This little red motor-powered… thing was no more than 2/3rds the size of a Smart car. It was roughly car-shaped, but no bigger than a large golf-cart, which is what I first thought it was before noticing that it had a car-like grill. It didn’t really look like the picture of the Nano, which I’m not sure are either much smaller than a Smart car or even in the US yet anyway, so I have no idea what it was.
Why?
With the exception of service animals who are a special class, having a dog or cat in a business that isn’t pet-oriented (unlike a pet store, dog groomers or vet’s office) can be a State health code violation. I’ve seen a lot of decidedly pet-type small dogs in public places in MA in the past two years, though, so perhaps that’s changing.
On one especially warm day last week I was driving through the suburbs and slowed down passing a guy on a bike. He was pulling behind him a sort of screened in wagon that I’ve seen in pet catalogs (so you can take Muffy out for an airing). Inside was a little kid! I hope that was a one-time deal and he invests in a stroller.
I’ve already mentioned the squirrel’s nest that got blown down. The squirrel chewed up a blue vinyl tablecoth to weave into the nest along with leaves, some kind of fluff, and a ton of sticks and branches. The tree branches are festooned with little blue streamers.
Speaking of squirrels, my mother last fall saw a squirrel actually rolling a (smallish pumpkin ) down the street to an unknown destination. Hope he made it OK.
I saw a girl with a backpack and a service dog license hung from it. The dog was a tiny chihuahua-type dog. Useless as a guide dog, I’d imagine.
What was that about?
You know all those pictures of plastic grocery bags tangled in trees? A little while ago I saw a recyclable cloth bag from the grocery store tangled in a tree.
Probably that was an actual kid carrier thingy. We discussed those things here only a week or two ago.
edit: probably in the pit, since that’s where bike threads seem to end up.
It’s a new species of bag tree! You should document it.
If you look for the phrase “service animal” you should find a thread, in MPSIMS I think, from a month or three ago about how some animals are being classified as “service animals” for people with anxiety disorders etc.
I hope you’re aware that there are child trailers designed to carry children safely. Some may question their safety (as evidenced in a recent thread), but it’s still a lot safer than carrying children on child seats mounted on the bike itself.
A few years ago when I was heading to my girlfriend’s house, she called me to warn me that there was an insane squirrel blocking her door.
When I got there, there was a young squirrel indeed on her porch, it hissed at me and wouldn’t move. Her cats, inside a sliding glass door, were going nuts, “Look, there’s a snack right there, let us eat it”.
We finally de-squirrled the porch with the aid of peanuts and a big stick, I was very aware of the fact it might have been rabid.
One rainy night I was driving in the University district and saw what I thought was a man in a yellow raincoat with two heads, further inspection yielded a man with a parrot in a little yellow raincoat of it’s own.
Maybe I’d better spoiler this…[spoiler]My own calf muscles while I was undergoing daily debridement while waiting for a skin graft. It looked a little like the window in a box of bacon, apart from the filmy look of the fascia itself.
The surgeons had performed fasciotomies after my femoral artery was damaged in an accident, and the wounds soured after they stapled the leg shut. They waited about a week before trying again with a graft.[/spoiler]
Just yesterday I was sitting at my desk at work, when I heard some yelling outside the window. I sauntered over so see if there was anything interesting out there, and lo and behold, there was a completely stark bollock naked man walking down the middle of the street. No shoes, nothing. Now, this is a very busy street in the centre of Glasgow, and it was pissing with rain. Yet here was a man naked, unashamed and in the middle of the street.
I went to call over a co-worker to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating (I wasn’t), and came back to find him lying down in the middle of the road. He then got up, and ran off, still in the centre of the street, holding up traffic. About 20 seconds later, a police van went speeding after him.
Probably not the strangest thing I’ve ever seen, but all in all, a bit surreal for a rainy, cold Thursday afternoon in Glasgow.