What A Long, Strange Summer It’s Been: Best Of Weird News & Oddities

A portal to weird and strange occurrences seemingly opened this summer.

For the Labor Day Weekend, we’re bringing back some of the greatest Weird News & Oddities hits from the last few months.

If you’re taking a flight this weekend, here’s a timely reminder from the Transportation Security Administration: Stop stuffing your bras and pants with turtles and other animals.

Earlier this summer, TSA screeners at Miami International Airport found two turtles hidden in a woman’s bra.

“OK, friends, please — and we cannot emphasize this enough — stop hiding animals in weird places on your body and trying to sneak them through security,” the TSA said in a social media post.

This kind of thing happens more than you might think. TSA screeners at the Miami airport previously prevented a man from smuggling a bag of snakes in his pants. They also confiscated a bag of Amazon parrot eggs and live birds after they heard chirping coming from the carry-on baggage of an international traveler.

It’s not just a “Florida thing,” either. A few months before the bra-stuffing incident, a Pennsylvania man was caught with a red-eared slider turtle in his pants as he passed through airport security in Newark.

• Read more: FL Woman Busted For Turtles in Bra. Prompting Unusual TSA Warning

A Timely Reminder For Labor Day Hikes

If your Labor Day Weekend activities include a hike, we remind you of a Mark Twain “reports of my death are greatly exaggerated” moment for some day trippers in New York’s Adirondack Mountains over the Memorial Day Weekend.

And by day trippers, we mean the hikers had taken hallucinogenic mushrooms before their trek up a mountain, according to a news release from the state Department of Environmental Conservation.

The hikers were summiting Cascade Mountain in the Adirondack High Peaks when they called 911 to report a member of their party had died. They also told a steward on the mountains they were lost. The steward “determined the hikers were in an altered mental state,” then escorted them down the mountains to an ambulance, which took them to a hospital to be evaluated.

But what of the supposedly dead hiker? The person called authorities and gave them proof of life, then was escorted back to the campsite, where everyone was eventually reunited.

• Read the story: 1 Reason Not To Hike High Peaks While High

The Farfrompoopen Roads Less Traveled

Though in their cars and not in an altered state of mind, Labor Day day-trippers may feel like they are if they spend too much time trying to figure out why some streets are named what they are.

Take Farfrompoopen Road, for example. There are at least two of them, maybe more.

We understand the mental constipation here is palpable, so we’ll try to wipe away the confusion as best we can: Farfrompoopen is the name given to at least two roads in the United States.

One Farfrompoopen Road is in Arkansas and the other is in Tennessee. We can only guess at the reasons. We’ll let your seventh-grade self’s mind go where it will go on that one

At least Bucket of Blood Street has an origin story — a colorful one from the “roughest, toughest, most lawless town of the Old West.” It makes sense when you understand the truth behind the street’s name, and it is cool that it has endured all these years in its unedited g(l)ory.

Farfrompoopen and Bucket of Blood aren’t the only street names that’ll make you scratch your head and wonder who comes up with this stuff.

• Read more: 11 Of The Weirdest Street Names In America

Keep Your Mouth Shut

We can’t, and we doubt you can, either, after reading yet another timely reminder about the wisdom of keeping your mouth shut if you’re outside taking pictures at night this Labor Day Weekend — or any time or place where bats are found, for that matter.

A Massachusetts woman racked up nearly $21,000 in uninsured medical debt after a bat flew into her mouth while she was photographing the night sky in Arizona several weeks ago.

It was a freak accident. The bat flew toward Erica Kahn, 33, as she was setting up the shot and somehow got tangled between the camera and her face.

It didn’t bite her. But she still sought medical treatment— wouldn’t you? — even though she lost her health insurance when she lost her job. Her treatment included precautionary rabies shots.

“She screamed, and part of the bat went into her mouth. She doesn’t know which part or for how long, though she estimates it was only a few seconds,” KFF Health News reported.

“It seemed longer,” Kahn reportedly said.

It would.

• Read more: Bat Flies In Woman’s Mouth And It Costs Her Nearly $21K

He Let a Deadly Snake Bite Him 200 Times

Would you let some of the world’s deadliest, most potent venomous snakes, including black mambas, taipans and cobras, bite you 200 times?

No? What if the risk of death was almost zero — save a stint in the ICU after lapsing into a coma — and your sacrifice would improve the odds of survival for about 120,000 people who die every year from snake bites?

If you’re like Tim Friede, 57, of Two Rivers, Wisconsin, the answer to both questions is yes.

Friede has been a fan of snakes since he was 5. A citizen scientist whose intellectual curiosity makes up for what he lacks in degrees, he wondered: What if, by injecting himself with carefully calibrated doses of venom over time, he could develop an immunity to 16 species of venomous snakes?

It worked, and the results are promising for the development of a powerful antivenom.

Deadly snakes aren’t a big problem in Friede’s corner of the world, but he told a New York Times reporter that he is proud “to make a difference for people that are 8,000 miles away, that I’m never going to meet, never going to talk to, never going to see, probably.”

• Read more: Watch As Citizen Scientist Invites A Deadly Black Mamba To Bite Him

An ‘Alarming’ Fish Tale

An “alarming” invasive fish that can live for days out of water and prey on birds and mammals as it moves across land was recently captured in Pennsylvania, prompting a dire warning from wildlife officials.

The fish, a northern snakehead native to parts of Asia and Africa, was pulled out of the Schuylkill River in Chester County in early June. Because these torpedo-shaped fish can move across land and water, they can rapidly expand their range.

“They have been found in canals, ponds, lakes, and river systems in more than a dozen states,” Jamie K. Reaser, the executive director of the National Invasive Species Council, said in a Department of Interior publication. “The rate of new introductions and their spread within watersheds is alarming.”

Because of their overall strength and the size of their teeth, they can eat prey up to about a third of their own substantial body size (they can grow up to about 3 feet long and weigh as much as 20 pounds).

Beyond simply outcompeting native fish who share the top of the aquatic food chain, the long, torpedo-shaped fish disturb the balance of the ecosystem wherever they take hold. They pose a significant threat to populations of largemouth bass and stocked fish like trout.

Anglers who catch a snakehead “must immediately kill the fish onsite” to limit its population and spread, officials said.

• Read more: Invasive Fish Can Move Across Land And Eat Birds And Mammals

Stuffed With Nightmares

Wait. Aren’t teddy bears supposed to be comforting?

Not so much with a novelty teddy bear made to look like it was wrapped in human skin that prompted police in Victorville, California, to cordon off a gas station and call in the coroner’s office to inspect the gruesome-looking thing.

Officers had described it as “a teddy bear patched together from flesh.” A closer forensics examination gave everyone involved reason to sigh in relief. The teddy bear was constructed of man-made materials and contained no human tissue.

The bear is the creation of Robert Kelly, a South Carolina horror artist and designer who sells the bears on Etsy. He told Patch he had no idea that the customer would place the macabre bear at the bus stop at the ARCO gas station as a prank.

• Read the Patch Exclusive: Inside The Mind Of Horror Artist Who Crafted ‘Human-Skinned’ Teddy Bear