From a criminal with a conscience to a German ballet director without one, and weird Valentine’s pronouncements in India to a surprising revelation from Chick-fil-A, not to mention rare Dennis the Menace news, it was just another normal, wacky week.

OH, POOP!

A German newspaper critic had animal feces smeared on her face by a ballet director who apparently took offense at a review she wrote. The daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported that a furious Marco Goecke approached its dance critic, Wiebke Huester, during the interval of a premiere at Hannover’s opera house, pulled out a paper bag with animal feces and smeared her face with the contents before making off through a packed theatre foyer. The newspaper said that Goecke had apparently felt provoked by a recent review she wrote.

Huester filed a criminal complaint, and the opera house said Huester’s “personal integrity” was violated “in an unspeakable way” and suspended the ballot director. Goecke was ordered to apologize “comprehensively” but appeared at least partly unrepentant in an interview with public broadcaster NDR, though he acknowledged that his “choice of means wasn’t super, absolutely.”

CRIME OF CONSCIENCE

Authorities arrested a Florida man who they said broke into a convenience store and took a few items, but left his debit card behind. In a video posted by police on Facebook, the suspect told deputies he left his debit card so he “could come back later and pay” for the items he took. “I didn’t want to steal anything, you know, that’s against the law,” he said, though the Flagler County sheriff observed, “Leaving a debit card behind does not absolve you from theft or committing a burglary.” Deputies said they tracked the man down to return the debit card — and arrest him for burglary and theft.

HOLY COW!

India’s government-run animal welfare department appealed to citizens to mark Valentine’s Day this year not as a celebration of romance but as “Cow Hug Day” to better promote Hindu values. The board said that “hugging cows will bring emotional richness and increase individual and collective happiness.” Devout Hindus, who worship cows as holy, say the Western holiday goes against traditional Indian values.

In recent years, Hindu hardliners have raided shops in Indian cities, burned cards and gifts, and chased hand-holding couples out of restaurants and parks, saying that Valentine’s Day promotes promiscuity. But young, educated Indians irrespective of their religion, typically spend the holiday crowding parks and restaurants, exchanging gifts and holding parties to celebrate like any other Indian festival. Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, a political analyst, said the cow-message is “absolutely crazy” and “defies logic.”

TWELVE IS ENOUGH

A Polish mother of seven successfully gave birth to premature quintuplets, hospital officials said Tuesday. The two boys and three girls were born through caesarean section Sunday, in the pregnancy’s 28th week, at a hospital in Krakow. Weighing between 710 and 1,400 grams, they were all put in incubators and given breathing support, but doctors said they are all doing fine.

The mother, Dominika Clarke, 37, said she was feeling “much better than I had expected,” adding, “If you have a system, a calm approach and a positive attitude, then it is possible to have a really cool life with such a large bunch of children.” Clarke and her British husband’s other children are aged between 10 months and 12 years and include two pairs of twins.

OH, HAPPY DAY!A statue of Dennis the Menace that was stolen from a park in Monterey, Ca., last summer was found submerged in a nearby lake, prompting the town’s sheriff to declare: “Today is a happy day!” A dive team found the 1-metre statue after police received an anonymous tip about its location.

The creator of the comic strip character, Hank Ketcham, was a long-time resident of Monterey and died there in 2001. The park’s original statue was stolen in 2006 and hasn’t been found. Its replacement was stolen in August 2022 by someone who cut through its foot to remove it. In between, another statue was found in a Florida scrap yard and was sent to Monterey, where officials determined it was not the right one, but nevertheless put it up in front of a city parks building. Now two Dennises are better than none.