A German man vaxxed to the max highlighted last week’s oddball news, along with bizarre beach trash, an unexpected Easter gift, how “living draculas” survive, and one tough baby!

AND SOME PEOPLE WON’T GET EVEN ONE

A 60-year-old man allegedly had himself vaccinated against COVID-19 dozens of times in Germany in order to sell forged vaccination cards with real vaccine batch numbers to people not wanting to get vaccinated themselves. The man from the eastern Germany city of Magdeburg is said to have received up to 90 shots at vaccination centres for months until police caught up with him. The suspect was not detained but is under investigation for unauthorized issuance of vaccination cards and document forgery. It was not immediately clear what impact the approximately 90 shots of COVID-19 vaccines, which were from different brands, had on the man’s personal health.

BABY WAS PACKIN’

US Transportation Security Administration officers found a 25-cm.-long butcher knife wedged into the side of a baby’s car seat at a security checkpoint at Boston’s Logan International Airport last week. “We love babies… but not butcher knives!” TSA New England said in Twitter post, adding, “Pack your knives properly in your checked bag and you’re good to go.”

State police were informed after the knife was found and confiscated. No one was arrested and the woman and her baby were allowed to continue on their flight to Atlanta. It’s not clear why the passenger (or the baby?) needed a knife, police said.

BETTER LATE THAN NEVER

Two of naturalist Charles Darwin’s notebooks that were reported stolen from Cambridge University’s library have been returned, two decades after they disappeared. The UK university said the manuscripts were left in the library inside a pink gift bag, along with a note wishing the librarian a Happy Easter.

The notebooks, which include the 19th-century scientist’s famous 1837 “Tree of Life” sketch, went missing in 2001 after being removed for photographing, though at the time staff believed they might have been misplaced. After searches of the library’s collection of 10 million books, maps and manuscripts failed to find them, they were reported stolen to police in October 2020. Local detectives notified the global police organization Interpol and launched an international hunt for the notebooks, valued at millions of pounds (dollars). The notebooks are set to go on public display from July as part of a Darwin exhibition at the library.

I TOLD YOU NOT TO TAKE YOUR TEETH TO THE BEACH

Volunteers picked up a record amount of trash from New Jersey’s beaches last year, with plastic items dominating the haul, and bizarre castoffs including male enhancement pills, a set of braces, a glow-in-the-dark condom and a Turkish Airlines hygiene kit found on the sand as well. The Clean Ocean Action coastal environmental group released its annual report Wednesday on the result of the prior year’s beach sweeps. Over 10,000 volunteers picked up over half a million items along the state’s 204-km. coastline in cleanups held in spring and fall of 2021.

And some of it was just head-scratching, if not stomach-turning: A hunk of human hair; a full set of dentures; a thong; a used narcan kit (used to revive drug overdose victims); several marijuana bags (empty, of course); a bullet casing, and a fake eyeball were among items picked up. There also was a parking ticket; a lottery ticket; a glue stick; mini refrigerator; toilet brush; TV remote control; Mason jar filled with (we hope) liquor; a plastic monkey; and a set of rosary beads, possibly from someone praying for the cast of characters that left all this behind.

WHY ‘BIZARRE’ BATS DRINK BLOOD
Scientists have figured out why vampire bats are the only mammals that can survive on a diet of just blood. They compared the genome of common vampire bats to 26 other bat species and identified 13 genes that are missing or no longer work in vampire bats. Over the years, those gene tweaks helped them adapt to a blood diet rich in iron and protein but with minimal fats or carbohydrates, the researchers reported.

The bats live in South and Central America and are basically “living Draculas,” said co-author Michael Hiller of Germany’s Max Planck Institute. Most mammals couldn’t survive on a low-calorie liquid diet of blood. Only three vampire species of the 1,400 kinds of bats can do that – the others eat mostly insects, fruit, nectar, pollen, or meat, such as small frogs and fish. “Blood is a terrible food source,” said Hannah Kim Frank, a bat researcher at Tulane University. “It’s totally bizarre and amazing that vampire bats can survive on blood – they are really weird, even among bats.”

IF A CRANE FALLS OVER IN THE WOODS…

An Alabama man who called a wrecker service asking to have a 70-ton crane pulled out of the woods is now charged with stealing the heavy machinery. The owner of a towing service contacted the Chilton County Sheriff’s Office saying the man had called claiming someone gave him the crane, and he wanted it removed so he could sell it for scrap. The wrecker service owner recalled moving the same crane a few years before and contacted its owner, who denied having given it away. “We have worked a lot of theft cases over the years, but this one definitely takes first place in the heavyweight category,” Sheriff John Shearon’s office said.

FLYING THE COUP

One of two flamingos that escaped from a Kansas zoo during a storm 17 years ago has been spotted on the coast of Texas, wildlife officials say. The Coastal Fisheries division of Texas Parks and Wildlife confirmed that the African flamingo was identified by the number 492 on its leg band. The bird and another flamingo escaped from the Sedgwick County Zoo in Wichita on a stormy night in June 2005. Employees had not yet clipped the birds’ wings to prevent them from flying, which facilitated their escape. While the other flamingo was never seen again, No. 492 has been spotted several times in Wisconsin, Louisiana, and Texas, sometimes with other wild flamingos.