Watercooler Stories

Mocking birds singing for mates

BOCA RATON, Fla., May 29 (UPI) -- It's mating season for mocking birds and they have arrived in South Florida, where the feathered lovers sing for a mate ... and sing and sing, one family says.

Kristine Collins told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel her family lost some sleep last week when a mockingbird perched outside their bedroom windows and wouldn't stop singing.

"It was incredibly loud and a really cheerful little tune, but it went on all night long," said Collins, who lives in the Baybury neighborhood west of Boca Raton. "I don't know how that little bird had enough energy to do it for two straight nights."

The bird, which the family calls Tweetie, was undeterred by the family's efforts to quiet it.

"My daughter was banging on her window and the bird just would not stop," Collins said. "I told the kids to sleep on the other side of the house, but we turned on fans to drown out the noise."

There is a way to get the mocking bird to stop singing, but not permanently.

"When people ask me how to make a mockingbird stop singing, I tell them to find him a girlfriend," said Rick Newman, a conservation biologist at Gumbo Limbo Nature Center in Boca Raton. "The males protect their territory and keep on singing until they find a mate."

Diver finds credit card lost 25 years ago

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla., May 28 (UPI) -- A Florida contractor found a credit card a friend lost 25 years earlier a mile offshore and 90 feet down on an artificial reef.

John Krayeski of West Palm Beach told the Palm Beach Post he likes to leave the ocean floor tidier than he found it, so he picked up the card he saw in the sand. He recognized it as an old J.C. Penney card and then, when he had a chance to examine it more closely after he had surfaced, realized the name on it was familiar.

Krayeski called Jack Jacobs, a caterer who lives in Delray Beach. Jacobs' wife told him she and her husband had never had a J.C. Penney card, but Jacobs called back to say the card was indeed his.

"I told him I'd lost that card 25 years ago when I was living in Davie, before I was married," Jacobs said. "The befuddling thing is, how did it get a mile offshore on some reef?"

That's a question no one can answer. The artificial reef, the Triangle, was put together from a freighter, a barge and -- this is the Palm Beach area, after all -- an old Rolls Royce.

Repairman allegedly filled ATMs with fakes

REDWOOD CITY, Calif., May 28 (UPI) -- A San Francisco ATM repairman has been charged with substituting counterfeit homemade bills for real ones in the machines he fixed.

Samuel Kioskli, 64, was arrested after a traffic stop in Phoenix two weeks ago, KCBS-TV, San Francisco, reported. He allegedly made crude $20s using a copying machine and placed them in six Bank of America cash machines in San Francisco and one in Daly City, Calif., on July 4, 2010.

San Mateo County District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe said Kioskli became a suspect after his wife reported him missing.

"He's not a 21-year-old. This man was in his sixties, and he suddenly decided to flee the area to go for a new life. The why of it is the answer we hope to get in the proceedings," he said. "He did get 10 months of a new life, we're not fully sure what that new life was, but it certainly satisfied him down in Arizona I guess."

Kioskli is back in California and appeared in court Wednesday in Redwood City. Wagstaffe said bank customers who got the phony bills have been reimbursed.

Detective arrested after potty incident

BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, May 28 (UPI) -- A Zimbabwean police sergeant got in trouble for piddling in the presidential privy without permission, official said.

Alois Mabhunu, a homicide detective, was on duty at the annual Zimbabwe International Trade Fair in the western city of Bulawayo when he had the urge to purge, The Guardian reported.

Unable to hold the call of nature, Mabhunu rushed into a bathroom reserved for President Robert Mugabe.

"Under intense pressure from the call of nature, the officer forced his way in and managed to relieve himself," an unnamed official said. "He was arrested on 7 May after a report was made to Mugabe's security men and to senior police officers in the city."

Mabhunu was being held in police detention in a barracks on the outskirts of Bulawayo. His attorney, a leading Zimbabwean human rights lawyer, is challenging his detention.

"There has to be a law saying the toilet is the president's, but this was a public one," said attorney Beatrice Mtetwa. "They will have had to issue a proclamation in the government gazette specifying it. I bet they didn't do that."