Offbeat

Lucy Roberts managed a jewelry store for a year and would bring jewelry home with her, falsifying inventory records. She left the job and later went on a cruise, sending selfies to her former coworkers and telling them how much fun she was having. Police arrested her at the airport when she returned to the UK.

Archive/mirror: https://archive.ph/ERbIx

A young female bear caused a stir after wandering out of the forest and into the leafy suburbs of the Lithuanian capital.

For two days, the brown bear ambled through the neighborhoods of Vilnius, trotted across highways and explored backyards — all while being chased by onlookers with smartphones and, eventually, drones.

The government then issued a permit for the bear to be shot and killed.

That did not go down well with Lithuania’s hunters who refused, aware that there is only a tiny number of the protected species in the entire country.

Archive/mirror: https://archive.ph/1coAV

Ed the Zebra was captured safely after being located in a pasture near a subdivision in the Christiana community in central Tennessee, the Rutherford County Sheriff’s Office confirmed. The sheriff’s office said aviation crews captured the zebra.

“Ed was airlifted and flown by helicopter back to a waiting animal trailer,” the sheriff's office said in a statement.

Video posted by the sheriff's office shows Ed wrapped in a net with his head sticking out as he is carried by the helicopter to the trailer.

Archive/mirror: https://archive.ph/hVntk

TLDR: 'members of the beekeeping community came to the rescue, with over two dozen responding to the scene' and 'Hive boxes from the overturned truck were recovered, restored and returned to use. By morning, most bees should have returned to their hives, and those responsible for their delivery will be in charge'

Archive/mirror: https://archive.ph/1dlJQ

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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/43350212

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Humans have made the world less hospitable for birds in many ways. One obvious and intentional example of this can be found in towns and cities worldwide: anti-bird spikes. The pointy wires you might see attached to roofs, ledges, and light poles are meant to deter urban species like pigeons from landing, pooping, and even nesting where people don’t want them to. But in an avian act of poetic justice, a handful of European birds have struck back.

Apparently Carrion Crows and Eurasian Magpies are stealing and repurposing the spikes as a nest-building material. Nests featuring the deterrent were documented in a study published Tuesday in the Dutch journal Deinsea, an online periodical from the Natural History Museum Rotterdam.

Archive/mirror: https://archive.ph/aZTku

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Everyone was ok:

The aircraft sustained substantial damage but the pilot and passengers were uninjured, according to the incident report. The penguin was also unharmed, the report noted.

How it happened:

The pilot and passengers were conducting an aerial survey flight of an island off South Africa's Eastern Cape on January 19, 2025. The helicopter safely landed on Bird Island. Before departing, one of the passengers, who the incident report referred to as a "specialist," asked that they transport one of the penguins on the island back with them. The pilot agreed, and the penguin was placed in a cardboard box.

When the helicopter was at an altitude of around 50 feet, the cardboard box slid off the passenger's lap -- onto the pilot's cyclic pitch control lever, the incident report said. The helicopter rolled to the right. The pilot could not recover, the incident report said. As the aircraft descended, the main rotor blades of the helicopter struck the ground, and the helicopter landed on its side, about 60 feet from where it had taken off.