Maryland Students Prank School By Listing It On Zillow As 'Nice Half-Working Jail'

A group of high school seniors in Fort Meade, Maryland, had fun pranking their high school last week ― by attempting to sell it on Zillow.

The students at Meade High School listed their school on the real estate website for a measly $42,069, local news outlets reported.

The listing, which was eventually removed, advertised a “complementary trash scented air freshener and water issues!”

Students also referred to the school as a “nice half working jail,” and said “all 15 bathrooms come with sewage issues!” as well as “dangerous unfinished sections that could cost you your life!”

The listing also promised that “your neighbors are rodents and insects that will make you squeal!”

Although the listing was a little insulting, Anne Arundel County Public Schools spokesperson Bob Mosier admits he found it funny.

“This is incredibly creative advertising, but we are stunned that the listers so vastly underestimated the value of this prime real estate with amazing amenities,” he said in a statement to media outlets. “Potential buyers surely will be flocking to snap this deal up, right? This won’t be on the market for long.”

Turns out, seniors in the same school district previously attempted to sell another educational institution as a prank.

In spring 2020, at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, students at Broadneck High School in Annapolis, Maryland, hung a “for sale” sign outside the school.

“It, like the Meade High School prank, was simply funny,” Mosier told Patch. “No one was hurt, no property was damaged, and everyone got a great laugh.”

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D.C. Panel Calls On Man To Boot Down Giant Transformers On Sidewalk

Some Washington, D.C., residents aren’t fans of a pair of Transformers statues meeting their eyes in their Georgetown neighborhood. And they may get their wish after a D.C. panel called on the owner Thursday to remove the robots from the sidewalk.

Dr. Newton Howard, a billionaire neuroscientist at Georgetown University, owns the sculptures and placed them outside his home over two years ago. A statue of Optimus Prime overlooks the street below while Bumblebee and another Transformer greet visitors on the ground.

The statues have reportedly brought tourists, children and fans of the iconic franchise to the street, and several visitors who spoke to Washington’s News4 appeared to delight in their presence.

But complaints to several area groups show neighbors haven’t all enjoyed seeing the Transformers roll out onto their block.

“It is clear that ‘transformer robot’ structures sitting on planters are clearly inconsistent with the goal to preserve the historic nature of Georgetown,” read a 2021 letter from six of Howard’s neighbors, according to WUSA9.

“We are not naive and understand why people stop and look at the ‘Transformers.’ They need to be, however, in a location suitable to safe vehicular and pedestrian traffic and where residents will not share an unnecessary burden by their presence,” wrote Catherine Emmerson on behalf of a citizens’ group on the Georgetown street in March of this year.

The complaints were enough to spark D.C.’s Public Space Committee, a government body that decides on the use of public space for matters like sidewalk cafes, to decide Thursday that the bots should be removed from the sidewalk, WUSA9 reported.

A separate, three-person federal board ― which reportedly approved the statues’ six-month installment back in 2021 ― called last month for Howard to remove the bots.

D.C. Shadow Sen. Paul Strauss, an attorney representing Howard, argued at the Thursday meeting that the bots don’t “endanger” the public, according to DCist/WAMU.

“The allegations that they are contributing to a traffic or dangerous activity is just laughable,” he said.

Peter Cullen and Dan Gilvezan ― voice actors of Optimus Prime and Bumblebee, respectively, in the original “Transformers” series ― also joined the meeting to back Howard’s pleas to keep the statues put.

“Now, I understand some people think that these statues don’t fit the character of the neighborhood, that they stand out like a sore thumb. Well, first, I resent being compared to a sore thumb,” Gilvezan said. “A healthy, well-functioning thumb, maybe, but a sore thumb?”

“The Mandalorian” star Emily Swallow, who was born in D.C. and plays The Armorer in the “Star Wars” series, also testified in support of Howard.

Strauss, in an interview with DCist/WAMU, responded to the committee’s decision and assured that the fight for the Autobots is “not over yet.”

“Obviously there’s a variety of legal options but we want to get a better sense of whether reapplying with certain modifications may make some sense,” he said.

“At the end of the day, this should be a decision made by D.C. residents, not federal appointees,” Strauss added. “Dr. Howard’s front porch does not involve a federal interest.”

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Bear Barges Into Connecticut Bakery And Scarfs Up 60 Cupcakes

AVON, Conn. (AP) — A hungry black bear barged into the garage of a Connecticut bakery, scared several employees and helped itself to 60 cupcakes before ambling away.

Workers at Taste by Spellbound in the town of Avon were loading cakes into a van for delivery on Wednesday when the bear showed up. There are between 1,000 and 1,200 black bears living in Connecticut, the state environmental agency says, with sightings last year in 158 of the state’s 169 towns and cities.

Bakery owner Miriam Stephens wrote in an Instagram post that she heard employee Maureen Williams “screaming bloody murder” and yelling that there was a bear in the garage.

Williams told TV station WTNH that she shouted to scare the bear off but it retreated and came back three times.

Williams said the bear charged at her so she backed out of the garage and ran.

Surveillance video obtained by WTNH shows bakery workers walking around the side of the business to try to scare the bear, but then running away after it scares them.

The video shows the bear dragging a container of cupcakes from the garage into the parking lot. Stephens said the bear ate 60 cupcakes.

A baker finally got the bear to leave by honking a car horn, Williams said.

The four-footed thief was gone by the time police and officers from the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection arrived.

No one was injured in the encounter — one in a series of troubling interactions between black bears and humans in Connecticut.

A 74-year-old woman suffered bites to her arms and legs last month when she was attacked by a bear while walking her dog in a Hartford suburb, the first such attack this year. There were two attacks last year, including one in October where a 10-year-old boy was mauled in a backyard.

“The frequency and severity of bear-human interactions is increasing,” DEEP spokesperson Paul Copleman said Friday.

Statistics compiled by the department show that there were a record 67 reports of bears entering Connecticut homes in 2022. The previous record was 45 in 2020.

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German Surgeon Fired After Asking Hospital Cleaner To Assist Amputation

BERLIN (AP) — Officials at a hospital in western Germany have expressed regret after it emerged that one of their surgeons got a cleaner to assist in a toe amputation.

Public broadcaster SWR reported Friday that the incident at the Mainz University Hospital, which happened in 2020, didn’t result in any complications to the patient but the doctor has since been fired.

The hospital’s chief executive, Norbert Pfeiffer, said the surgeon wrongly decided to go ahead with the routine procedure even though no qualified assistant was available, SWR reported.

When the patient, who had received a local anesthetic, became restless the doctor asked a nearby cleaner to hold the man’s leg and pass surgical instruments, according to local daily Mainzer Allgemeine Zeitung. The paper reported that the cleaner had no medical experience.

The incident came to light after a hospital manager spotted the cleaner — bloody gauze pads in hand — in the operating theater, it reported.

“This should never have happened,” German news agency dpa quoted Pfeiffer as saying.

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Florida Man Makes Big Splash By Setting Record For Living Underwater

KEY LARGO, Fla. (AP) — A university professor broke a record for the longest time living underwater without depressurization this weekend at a Florida Keys lodge for scuba divers.

Joseph Dituri’s 74th day residing in Jules’ Undersea Lodge, situated at the bottom of a 30-foot-deep lagoon in Key Largo, wasn’t much different than his previous days there since he submerged March 1.

Dituri, who also goes by the moniker “Dr. Deep Sea,” ate a protein-heavy meal of eggs and salmon prepared using a microwave, exercised with resistance bands, did his daily pushups and took an hour-long nap. Unlike a submarine, the lodge does not use technology to adjust for the increased underwater pressure.

The previous record of 73 days, two hours and 34 minutes was set by two Tennessee professors ― Bruce Cantrell and Jessica Fain ― at the same location in 2014.

But Dituri isn’t just settling for the record and resurfacing: He plans to stay at the lodge until June 9, when he reaches 100 days and completes an underwater mission dubbed Project Neptune 100.

His research includes daily experiments in physiology to monitor how the human body responds to long-term exposure to extreme pressure.

“The idea here is to populate the world’s oceans, to take care of them by living in them and really treating them well,” Dituri said.

The outreach portion of Dituri’s mission includes conducting online classes and broadcast interviews from his digital studio beneath the sea. During the past 74 days, he has reached over 2,500 students through online classes in marine science and more with his regular biomedical engineering courses at the University of South Florida.

While he says he loves living under the ocean, there is one thing he really misses.

“The thing that I miss the most about being on the surface is literally the sun,” Dituri said. “The sun has been a major factor in my life – I usually go to the gym at five and then I come back out and watch the sunrise.”

The mission combines medical and ocean research along with educational outreach and was organized by the Marine Resources Development Foundation, owner of the habitat.

“The record is a small bump and I really appreciate it,” said Dituri, a University of South Florida educator who holds a doctorate in biomedical engineering and is a retired U.S. Naval officer. “I’m honored to have it, but we still have more science to do.”

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Bear Stuck In A Tree Keeps Traverse City, Michigan, In Suspense On Mother's Day

TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. (AP) — A city in northern Michigan has a new Mother’s Day memory: A 350-pound bear was in a tree for hours, watched by dozens of people, before it fell asleep and dropped onto mattresses below.

“It’s like the best block party ever,” Annette Andersen said.

The drama in Traverse City began when wildlife experts responded to a morning call about a bear in a leafy tree. They fired at least four tranquilizer darts into his butt. The bear snoozed on a thick limb before finally dropping to the ground by early afternoon Sunday.

Ashlea Walter hauled mattresses from her house to soften the fall, the Traverse City Record-Eagle reported.

Spectators sitting on lawns or in chairs held their phones up to take pictures and video.

“They’re a tough animal,” said Steve Griffith, a state wildlife biologist. “Obviously they are in trees all the time, and they do have accidents in the wild. ... They can take a pretty good fall.”

The bear was transferred on a tarp to a cylindrical bear trap after his vital signs and airway were checked.

Next stop: a long drive and release in a wooded area, “probably 50-60 miles at minimum,” Griffith said.

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Scientists Puzzled By Mystery Tremors Off Danish Island

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — A series of minor tremors recorded on the Danish Baltic island of Bornholm Saturday has puzzled scientists, who now say they were caused by ”acoustic pressure waves from an unknown source.”

At first the tremors were thought to have been caused by earthquakes. Then, seismologists theorized that they originated from controlled explosions in Poland, more than 140 kilometers (nearly 90 miles) to the south.

On Monday, the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, an official body that monitors the underground, said the tremors were “not caused by earthquakes, but by pressure waves from an event in the atmosphere.” However, they came from “an unknown source.”

“The seismologists can report that it is unlikely that the tremors originate from a controlled explosion in Poland, which was carried out shortly before the first reports of tremors on Bornholm,” the body known as GEUS said in a statement.

On Saturday, GEUS said it had received “more than 60” tips from people on Bornholm that “earthquake-like tremors” – described as a deep rumbling, shaking and rattling, changing pressure in the ear — had been reported in the afternoon on Bornholm.

No one was hurt. Police said they too were contacted by members of the public about the tremor on the eastern part of the island. Danish media reported that the tremors caused a crack in the wall of a house.

GEUS said that seismic tremors were measured at a magnitude of 2.3.

Polish authorities have said that there was intensive activity during the Anakonda23 exercise in Ustka, northern Poland, involving jet fighters and live firing of artillery munitions.

GEUS, an independent research and advisory institution within Denmark’s Ministry of Climate, Energy and Utilities, said that it had two seismographs on Bornholm that collect data around the clock.

Bornholm, home to nearly 40,000 people, is a rocky island in the Baltic Sea, south of Sweden, northeast of Germany and north of Poland.

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Dodgers Superstar Avoids Team Hotel Said To Be Haunted, Stays At Airbnb Instead

Dodgers star Mookie Betts has heard boos before ― but not from ghosts. And he wanted to keep it that way.

So, when the Los Angeles baseball team pulled into Milwaukee for a three-game series against the Brewers ending Wednesday, Betts refused to stay in the reputedly haunted Pfister Hotel. He bunked with pals at an Airbnb “just in case” the claims are legit, he told The Orange County Register.

“It was a good excuse not to stay there,” Betts said.

The former American League MVP said he doesn’t believe in ghosts. But he apparently respects the supernatural enough to avoid taking a chance.

“You can tell me what happened after,” he said. “I just don’t want to find out myself.”

Betts has stayed at the Pfister before in his MLB travels.

“But I couldn’t sleep,” he told the newspaper. “Every noise, I’d be like, ‘Is that something?’”

The creepy Pfister claims are backed by some other big leaguers.

Former Texas Rangers infielder Michael Young told ESPN the Magazine he heard heavy footsteps in his Pfister room once. When he asked the possible apparition to let him sleep, the footsteps stopped, he said.

Bryce Harper, now of the Philadelphia Phillies, swore his clothes and a table were moved overnight during a 2012 stay. When no teammate admitted to a prank, he requested a different room.

Pfister representatives didn’t immediately return HuffPost’s request for comment.

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Mom Sees Something Strange In Her Toddler’s Ear — And Makes Shocking Discovery

An Arkansas family is no longer ticked off after going through a truly eerie experience.

Jessica DeLoach is going viral for a TikTok video that details how she noticed something in her 2-year-old daughter’s ear while giving her a bath last month.

“It seriously looked like she had shoved some food in her ear,” she told People.

DeLoach contacted her daughter’s pediatrician, who suggested bringing the child in for an exam.

“The removal process was very traumatizing as you have to hold the child still to remove items safely,” she said. “A 2-year-old just doesn’t understand what the doctor is trying to do.”

The doctor eventually discovered two ticks in the girl’s ear ― which surprised DeLoach.

“I had no idea it was a tick until the doctor started removing it from her ear,” she said. On her TikTok, DeLoach said her daughter had been outside while she was doing yard work the day before.

“I’m just glad she didn’t have any after effects,” DeLoach told People about her daughter.

She made the video to raise awareness about ticks to other parents before summer tick season really begins.

“Other parents have told me about similar experiences, even ticks crawling onto their child off of their dog. I’ve learned it happens more than I could have ever imagined,” she said.

Parents have reason to be concerned.

Lyme disease, a tick-borne illness, is on the rise as well as babesiosis, a disease that can cause flulike symptoms or more severe illness. To avoid ticks, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends avoiding wooded and brushy areas with high grass when possible, and thoroughly checking clothing, gear and pets after time outside.

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Plump Chicago Snapping Turtle Earns Viral Glory As ‘Chonkosaurus’

CHICAGO (AP) — Footage of a plump snapping turtle relaxing along a Chicago waterway has gone viral after the man who filmed the well-fed reptile marveled at its size and nicknamed it “Chonkosaurus.”

Joey Santore was kayaking with a friend along the Chicago River last weekend when they spotted the large snapping turtle sitting atop a large chain draped over what appear to be rotting logs.

He posted a jumpy video of the turtle on Twitter, labeling it the “Chicago River Snapper aka Chonkosaurus.”

In the video, Santore can be heard sounding stunned by the size of the turtle, which was displaying folds of flesh extending well beyond its shell.

“Look at this guy. We got a picture of this most beautiful sight. Look at the size of that ... thing,” he says, using an expletive. “Look at that beast. Hey, how ya doing guy? You look good. You’re healthy.”

Chris Anchor, the chief wildlife biologist with Forest Preserves of Cook County, said the snapping turtle Santore filmed is quite rare, considering its apparent size. He said it’s also unusual for the reptiles to be seen basking along rivers, but it probably recently emerged from hibernation.

“So my guess is that this animal had crawled out of the river to try and gather as much heat as it could in the sunshine,” Anchor told WMAQ-TV.

While it’s difficult to determine exactly how large the turtle is from the video alone, Anchor called it “a very large individual.” And he noted that snapping turtles are not picky eaters.

“Turtles this big will consume anything they can get their mouth around,” he said, adding that anyone encountering a snapping turtle should not disturb it or try to catch it.

“Enjoy it. Leave it alone,” Anchor said.

___

This story has been edited to correct the name of Anchor’s district: Forest Preserves of Cook County.

Chicago River Snapper aka Chonkosaurus. Great to see this beast thriving here on what was once such a toxic river, but is slowly getting cleaned up & restored. Somebody planted a bunch of native plants up the river from here, too. I can only wonder this things been eating. pic.twitter.com/u6bhlpo4p5

— Joey Santore (@JoeySantore) May 6, 2023

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