News of the weird

* In January, days after a crackdown by Mexican President Vicente Fox on corruption at the La Palma jail near Mexico City, a full-page ad appeared in the daily newspaper, Reforma, supposedly placed by higher-profile inmates, who, according to the ad, were now suffering under "subhuman" conditions, treated "like dogs, like animals, like we are worthless . . . scum of society." What the government had done was to confiscate the drug lords' and organized-crime leaders' big-screen TV's, computers, and cell phones (which they were using to retain control of their operations from behind bars), break up their prison rackets, and even end their personal pizza deliveries.

* The Eternal Temptation: The Roanoke (Va.) Times reported on January 17 that a Wytheville police officer had to rescue a 9-year-old boy who, with time on his hands waiting for a school bus on a "bone-deep cold" morning, decided to find out what would happen if he licked a metal pole. While awaiting someone to bring warm water to free the boy, the officer and the kid had the following conversation: "Have you learned anything?" "Uh-huh." "Are you going to do this again?" "Uh-uh."

* A landmine-detection outfit in Mozambique has upgraded from explosives-sniffing dogs to giant African Hamster rats, according to a December Agence France-Presse dispatch, because the lighter, more plentiful rats have noses that are just as sensitive and don't suffer dogs' need for affection and constant reassurances. And Northern Arizona University Professor Con Slobodchikoff, who spoke to the Albuquerque Journal in December about his two decades of elaborate, patient, desert research, said that prairie dogs he has studied at three locations in the Southwest speak in different dialects but would likely understand each other, can even invent sounds for new things, and perhaps can even gossip.

* In a tourist park next to the zoo in Chiang Mai, Thailand, handlers have toilet-trained seven elephants. In photos published in Bangkok's The Nation in January and now available on the Internet, a five-year-old elephant is shown using a giant white, Western-style concrete toilet as if he were human, including using his trunk to pull a cord to flush.

* Recurring Themes: Michael Henson's dog became the latest one to "drive," after he pawed the gearshift of Henson's idling truck, sending it through the front of the O'Reilly Auto Parts store in Springdale, Ark., in December. And Matthew Harper's hunting dog became the latest one to shoot someone, stepping on a shotgun's trigger and blasting Harper in the arm, near Upper Klamath Lake in Oregon in October. And Leana Beasley's Rottweiler assistance dog became one of the latest to save her client's life by (as per training) nose-punching a telephone's 911 button upon seeing Beasley suffer a grand mal seizure and then barking furiously into the receiver (Richland, Wash., October).

* Not Cut Out for a Life of Crime:

(1) Earmon Wilson, 44, walked in to police headquarters in Buffalo, N.Y., in January and confessed to two burglaries at his apartment house, even though he wasn't a suspect; he said his conscience was bothering him, which is also what he said in October 1994 when he unsolicitedly turned himself in for robbing a Buffalo bank.

(2) In Cincinnati, Ohio, in December, Ronald Godfrey pleaded guilty to a burglary, which he was forced to attempt alone because, according to a prosecutor, his brother James (also a burglar) refused to work with him, saying Ronald was too dumb. In the December burglary, Ronald accidentally hit himself in the head with a crowbar, splattering the scene with blood, which police traced back to him.

* Readers' Choice: In a widely publicized move in January, Oklahoma state Sen. Frank Shurden proposed legislation to bring back the "sport" of cockfighting, which the state outlawed in 2002. To appease critics, Shurden, apparently serious, suggested that the roosters wear tiny boxing gloves instead of the razor cleats on their legs and also wear electronic-sensitive vests in order to record hits so as to non-lethally determine the winner of a match.