News of the Weird: Seal sneaks into hotel for a nap

On Feb. 4, a guest at the Boulevard 17 hotel in Vlissingen, The Netherlands, returned to her room after taking her dog for a walk and found a gray seal taking a nap on the floor, NL Times reported. “Fortunately, she didn’t try to touch it,” said Valentijn Damen of the hotel ownership group Pier 7. “She walked up to the restaurant to get help.” The Zeeland Animal Welfare Foundation responded, with assistance from the Sea Animal Rescue Team Netherlands RTZ, put the seal in a basket and removed it to the beach. Officials said gray seals “look for a place to rest and sometimes lie in the middle of the terrace or on the road.”

In Seminole County, Florida, Alan Davis, 69, is famous for all the wrong reasons, ClickOrlando reported. Davis’ unsightly property has been the bane of his neighbors’ existence for 25 years, and this year, as he celebrates the anniversary of his first county code violation, he’s added another element: a 6-foot-tall fiberglass representation of a human butt. Also in his yard: stacks of scrap metal, steel drums, rusted appliances, tarps, junked vehicles and towering weeds. Davis calls the yard a “political protest” against the county government. “I pile it up intentionally to aggravate them,” he said. As of mid-January, Davis owed the county $5.4 million in fines, with more accruing every day. “I’m not going to pay it,” Davis said. “Freedom has a look. This is what it looks like,” he said.

Ashton Mann, 23, of Kearns, Utah, was arrested after shooting his unnamed friend in the chest, WAFB-TV reported on Feb. 4. On Feb. 2, police were called to a home where they found an unresponsive male. He was pronounced dead at the hospital. Mann told detectives that he and his friend had smoked weed earlier in the evening and started talking about and handling two handguns. The victim told Mann that he could dodge a bullet; while Mann said the guns were unloaded, after about six rounds of the “game,” one discharged and struck the victim as he tried to “jump out of the way.” Mann was expected to be charged with felony manslaughter.

Pennsylvania State Police are working to track down the perpetrator of a crime that’s no yolk ... or joke. The Associated Press reported that on Feb. 1, 100,000 eggs were stolen from the back of a trailer in Antrim Township, and no leads have come in. “In my career, I’ve never heard of a hundred thousand eggs being stolen,” said Trooper Megan Frazer. But then, egg prices have rarely been so high. “We’re hoping that somebody knows something,” Frazer said. That would be eggs-cellent.

A man was captured on video in Palmerston North, New Zealand, using a busy kiddie pool to take a bath, News.au.com reported on Feb. 6. The man, who wore swim trunks, had a bar of soap and lathered up his arms and legs before putting his hand down his shorts and vigorously washing his hindquarters. Facebook user Luminus DaGawd let his camera roll as everyone around the pool looked on, commenting, “Bro, it’s not a bath. ... All right, kids, get out of the pool.” People who viewed the video wondered why no one confronted the man, but others defended him, saying that kids often urinate in the pool and then other kids drink water from it. “Who’s really the yuck one?” Another complained, “Whole pool of people and no one there in that video stood up and told him to stop!”

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