Shrub Is A Cop, Hell Sells, And A 66-Foot Tall Nutcracker: Weird News & Oddities

Now, this is objectively funny. And, apparently, wildly successful.

A Dunellen, New Jersey, cop donned a ghillie suit to disguise himself as a shrub in a special detail that resulted in 74 tickets in six hours for distracted driving in violation of the state’s hands-free cellphone law.

Apparently, the shrub with hands standing on the sidewalk went unnoticed and was less of a distraction for drivers than their cellphones. That’s America in the digital age.

“Did you spot our ‘shrub’ today?” police wrote in the statement. “If you had your head buried in your phone, probably not!”

• Read more: A Shrub Gets The Bead On Distracted Drivers

Hell Sells

Hell is no longer for sale.

Adam and Evelyn Eberline bought it for — wouldn’t you know it? — just shy of $666,000, and they’ve pledged to keep Hell the hot ticket it has always been, at least in the near future.

Hell, if you haven’t figured it out yet, is an unincorporated town covering about seven acres in southeast Michigan. It has creatively named businesses like the Creamatory ice cream parlor and a wedding chapel whose slogan is, “A marriage that starts in Hell has nowhere to go but up.”

Everlyn Eberline told the Livingston Daily that she and her husband want to “keep it family friendly and just invest some love into it and make it better.”

No one knows for certain how Hell got its name, which was formally adopted by Putnam Township trustees in 1841. The most common and colorful account in local lore involves early settler George Reeves, who operated a mill, distillery and tavern there. As the story goes, he paid farmers for grain with whiskey, prompting their wives to say their husbands had “gone to Hell again.”

• Read more: Couple But Hell For Just Shy Of $666K

Cracking The Record

Luverne, Minnesota, has taken mixing the seasons to spectacular heights.

Towering nearly 66 feet over the small town is a nutcracker, a Christmas staple with deep German roots. It dwarfs the 33-foot version in Neuhausen, Germany, and presumably cracks its hold on the Guinness World Records title.

Dressed as Uncle Sam for America’s 250th anniversary, Verne the Patriot presides over a town with more decorative nutcrackers than people. And yes, the star-spangled giant has a working jaw.

A July unveiling may seem a little early for Tchaikovsky season, but Luverne’s nutcracker obsession is year-round. The town even holds a Nutcracker Fest every summer.

It all started with Betty Mann, 96, and a January 2001 trip to Cracker Barrel after the deaths of her daughter and husband.

“I said to my daughter-in-law, ‘I had a hard Christmas, and I’ve always wanted a wooden nutcracker. I’m buying myself a belated Christmas present,’” she recalled.

One nutcracker became more than 2,500, which Mann donated to the local historical society. The town kept collecting, and the total grew to more than 7,554 — roughly 2,500 more nutcrackers than residents.

• Read more: Minnesota Town Boasts World’s Tallest Nutcracker

Special Delivery

A Vienna, Virginia, household got the kind of package that makes a person check the label twice, then probably a third time.

The address was right. The name was not. Inside was a stash of fake IDs for people in several states, police said — certainly not the usual misdelivered socks, phone charger or whatever else a neighbor ordered.

The homeowners called police, who were trying to determine who made the IDs and why the house had been chosen as the delivery point. The residents, meanwhile, had gone from opening the mail to starring in someone else’s criminal subplot.

• Read more: Vienna Homeowners Get A Weird Delivery

Pig Fetus Harassment Lawsuit Settled

A Natick, Massachusetts, couple who blamed a former eBay employee for bizarre harassment over their e-commerce blog have settled their lawsuit for $55.7 million, according to their attorneys.

Ina and David Steiner named eBay, its former executive Devin Wenig and other former executives. Wenig was not a part of the criminal case that resulted in seven convictions against former employees and a criminal penalty of $3 million, which is the statutory maximum fine for these six felony offenses.

Among other things, several of the defendants ordered anonymous and “disturbing” deliveries to the victims’ home, including a preserved fetal pig, a bloody pig Halloween mask and a book on surviving the loss of a spouse, the suit said.

• Read more: Couple Settle Bizarre eBay Harassment Lawsuit For $55.7M

Where Is Flat Taylor?

It’s hard to say what inspired a barefoot thief to steal a life-size Taylor Swift cutout from a Mister Softee shop in Camarillo, California, on the night of July 27.

He and five others had stopped for ice cream earlier, surveillance video showed. About 20 minutes later, he returned alone, surveyed the shop, grabbed Cardboard Taylor and walked out with the calm demeanor of someone picking up dry cleaning.

Mister Softee wanted her back.

“It is with a heavy heart that we share that our Taylor Swift standee has been stolen,” the shop said in a social media post that included video of the theft.

Some context is useful. Without it, Mister Softee’s Swifty Swirl sounds like a cone handed over with unusual speed.

The treat debuted from an ice cream truck outside Madison Square Garden ahead of Swift and Travis Kelce’s wedding. It combines vanilla soft serve, cookie dough and chocolate dip, then piles on mini M&M’s, whipped cream and rainbow sprinkles.

The promotion continued in Camarillo, just without Cardboard Taylor standing guard.

And the question remained: Why?

Remember “Flat Stanley,” the 1964 children’s book that later inspired kids around the world to send paper versions of themselves on adventures?

Will Flat Taylor soon turn up in unexpected places around Southern California?

• Read more: Why Did Barefoot Thief Steal Taylor Swift Cutout?

Lost At Sea

A California sailor spent more than a month adrift in the Pacific after the mast on his boat broke two weeks into a voyage from Catalina Island to Hawaii. When the fuel ran out, Kai Sato, 39, had neither a sail nor a motor to get him back on course.

After days of drifting, he fashioned a makeshift sail from PVC pipe and kayak paddles. When his drinking water ran out, he collected condensation from buckets of seawater covered with plastic bags. He survived on oatmeal, fish and squid.

Sato finally worked his way back toward a shipping lane, where a cargo ship spotted and rescued him on July 21. Apparently undeterred by the Pacific’s unsubtle warning, he said his next voyage will be to the Philippines — in a bigger boat.

• Read more: Lost At Sea: California Man Survives Over A Month Before Rescue

River Otters Vs. Pelicans

A Darwinian battle of the fittest is unfolding at Point Reyes, California. As these contests in nature often are, it isn’t pretty.

River otters are pulling brown pelicans underwater and drowning them, according to researchers with the River Otter Ecology Project.

Otters may look playful, but they can be violent. Even so, “this is behavior that’s different, new and not like anything we’ve seen before,” said Megan Isadore, a co-author of the study.

The attacks may be an extension of the otters’ usual hunting habits. Isadore described them as “opportunistic predators” whose diets shift with the seasons and whatever prey is available.

The much larger pelicans, which can grow to be 5 feet long with a wingspan of up to 7½ feet, aren’t doing anything to save themselves.

Isadore and her co-author counted at least 73 pelican carcasses in a single season.

• Read more: River Otters Have Developed A Taste For Pelicans

Quiet, Please, Brooklyn

Thousands of New Yorkers stretched out on blankets and yoga mats at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and did something unusual for the city: They stayed quiet.

The garden’s annual Sound Bath drew a capacity crowd of 3,000 to the Cherry Esplanade for an evening of live strings, open sky and deliberate loafing. The Attacca Quartet performed music from the Grammy-winning album “Evergreen,” along with improvisations shaped by the surrounding landscape.

“Most people just lie down on the grass,” Katie Pidgeon, the garden’s director of public programs, said before the event. “You can just lie down and look up at the stars and enjoy a sort of quiet meditative performance.”

The sound bath began as an experiment in 2022 and proved so popular that it became an annual event. For one evening, at least, 3,000 Brooklynites agreed that the appropriate response to live music was to lie down and say nothing.

• Read more: Why 3,000 People Lay Quietly On The Lawn In Brooklyn

FYI, Then There’s This

The latest social media challenge has revived “ding-dong ditch” with a much harder edge.

Instead of ringing a stranger’s doorbell and running, participants kick doors hard enough to frighten the people inside and, in some cases, damage the property.

Residents may have no way of knowing whether the pounding is a prank or an attempted break-in.

Police in Royersford, Pennsylvania, were looking for several teens after reported incidents there and offered a blunt warning: The fleeting thrill may end with a court date.

• Read more: Latest Social Media Challenge Has A Hard Edge