UPI NewsTrack Quirks in the News

Angler catches what may be a piranha

JOLIET, Ill., Nov. 11 (UPI) -- A Joliet, Ill., man fishing waters warmed by a generating plant on the Des Plaines River claims he hooked what experts say may be a piranha.

D.J. Johnston, 28, hooked the fish near the Midwest Generation Plant, The Joliet (Ill.) Herald News reported Tuesday.

Johnston caught the fish Friday and it died Saturday so now he plans to mount it as a trophy, the Herald News reported.

Judging from a photograph Johnson took, the fish could be a red-bellied South American piranha, said Melissa Kruth, a spokeswoman for the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago.

"It was probably in someone's aquarium and they let it go," Kruth said.

Animal sanctuary urges turkey adoption

WATKINS GLEN, N.Y., Nov. 11 (UPI) -- An animal sanctuary in Watkins Glen, N.Y., is urging people to "adopt" a turkey rather than eat one this Thanksgiving.

Farm Sanctuary, the nation's leading farm animal protection group, wants people to go to its Web site at www.adoptaturkey.org to find ways to celebrate the bird without devouring it, sanctuary spokeswoman Angela Barker said in a release issued Tuesday.

Started in 1986, the Adopt-A-Turkey Project each year names six "spokesturkeys" to highlight the need for donations for food, bedding and medical care for turkeys and other farm animals rescued by Farm Sanctuary.

Barker estimates the Adopt-A-Turkey Project has saved more than 1,000 turkeys and helped place hundreds with families who have the room to take them home and care for them without eating them.

Accused NYC wife tests negative for herpes

NEW YORK, Nov. 11 (UPI) -- Lawyers for a New York woman being sued by her estranged husband say it wasn't their client who gave the plaintiff his case of herpes.

Amy Tanne was sued this year for allegedly passing herpes on to her attorney husband, Frederick Tanne, but the New York Post said Tuesday that Mrs. T's camp fired back in court papers by saying she tested negative for the virus.

The document said Mrs. Tanne was tested in October and "presented as 'negative' for HSV-2, more commonly known as genital herpes, with which Mr. Tanne is allegedly infected."

The newspaper said Mr. Tanne, a senior partner in a Manhattan firm who had been married to his wife for 22 years, could not be reached for comment.

Auction yields 1881 Alexander Bell phone

TORONTO, Nov. 11 (UPI) -- A Toronto man is trying to find someone who can verify his belief an 1881 wooden telephone he bought at auction belonged to inventor Alexander Graham Bell.

Daniel Peddie, 34, told the Toronto Sun he paid $350 for the large wooden box with a side hand crank, two bells and a mouthpiece on the front and a separate earpiece horn hanging on the side.

After buying it, he looked inside and found a patent renewal for the model with telephone inventor Bell's name on it. Also inside, he found an 1879 Toronto Telephone Dispatch Co. book listing 35 people and instructions for building rural telephone lines.

Peddie said the phone is now in a downtown safety deposit box as he searches for someone to authenticate the phone's history.

Bell was born in Scotland and conducted his earliest work on phones in Brantford, Ontario, 80 miles west of Toronto. He died at a family estate in the province of Nova Scotia in 1922.