Is the world getting crazier or what?! Here are a few strange but true tales gleaned from recent current events:

REVENGE OF THE MOUSE
 FORT SUMNER, N.M. - A mouse got its revenge against a homeowner who tried to dispose of it in a pile of burning leaves. The blazing creature ran back to the man's house and set it on fire.

Luciano Mares, 81, of Fort Sumner said he caught the mouse inside his house and wanted to get rid of it. "I had some leaves burning outside, so I threw it in the fire, and the mouse was on fire and ran back at the house," Mares said from a motel room Saturday.

Village Fire Chief Juan Chavez said the burning mouse ran to just beneath a window, and the flames spread up from there and throughout the house. (Well, later there was a story that said the mouse was dead when the man threw it on the fire; if so, that just spoils the tale!)

GOLDILOCKS WAS A BOAR
Berlin - Reuters) - A wild boar was found taking a nap in the guest bedroom in a Bavarian family's house after fleeing from hunters, police said Monday.

"The sow panicked and was completely disoriented after being chased in the morning by hunters," a police spokesman said. "It ran into a village and broke through a cellar window into a house. It fell asleep on a bed in the guest room."

THE CASANOVA COMMITMENT
ROME (Reuters) - Most Italians feel more guilty about over-eating than they do about cheating on their partners, a survey has found, suggesting that people in Casanova's native land care more about staying slim than staying faithful.

The survey, by psychology magazine Riza Psicosomatica, found that excessive eating and spending topped the list of what people considered the most guilt-inducing vices. Sexual infidelity came bottom of the list of the magazine's 'seven deadly sins', behind neglecting friends and family, failing at work and not looking after one's physique.

MINDING THE MUMMY
By Christy Arnold, The Cincinnati Enquirer
MADISONVILLE, Ohio — Johannas Pope didn't want to be buried, believing that she would come back to life. Authorities say the body of Johannas Pope sat in a chair on the second floor of this house for 2 1/2 years.

Pope died at her home here at age 61 on Aug. 29, 2003. A towel had been placed around her neck to keep her cool on that 87-degree summer day. She wore a white gown while sitting in a chair in an upstairs room, in front of a television that played as family members went about their lives downstairs.

She remained there, according to her wishes, for almost 2½ years. "Don't show my body when I'm dead," Hamilton County's coroner, Dr. O'dell Owens, said Monday when explaining Pope's wishes. "Don't bury me. I'm coming back.”

RETURN OF HARLEY THE CAT
HALLAM, Neb. (AP) — The Tighe family had long ago written off Harley the cat as dead. He was 8 years old when he went missing.

He was declawed. And he disappeared in the May 22, 2004, tornado.And even if he had survived the storm, which claimed the Tighe home, he wasn't a very nice cat, Sue Tighe said.She didn't think he'd find anyone willing to take care of him.

Somehow, though, Harley made it. On Monday, he came home.

CHARLOTTE’S WEB
STOCKHOLM (AFP) - A spider that nested in the ear of a Swedish woman was discovered and removed alive after 27 days.

The black spider, "the size of a thumbnail", crept into the woman's ear while she was sleeping and went undiscovered for almost a month, Swedish tabloid Expressen reported Wednesday.

The woman, whose name was not disclosed, told the paper that she at first experienced "a slight loss of hearing" and assumed that she had a build-up of wax. But when she heard "a scratching sound" in her ear she decided to go to the pharmacy to buy a cleanser to wash out her ear cavity. When she did so, the spider was flushed out alive and crawled away.

The woman recalled having seen a spider on her bed in November, 27 days earlier.

DOCTOR DOG
TAIPEI (AFP) - A female husky dog saved the life of a Taiwanese newborn by snatching him from the toilet after his mother gave birth alone at home and collapsed, a social worker said.

The woman gave birth to a baby boy into the toilet and managed to cut the umbilical cord with a small pair of scissors before collapsing on the floor, too weak to call for help from her roommate, she said.

But her faithful dog snatched up the infant's leg with her mouth and rescued him from drowning, the social worker said, holding the baby in her arms as the dog paced around at their temporary shelter in a charity home in Kaohsiung, southern Taiwan.

 "The dog approached her owner, who was lying on the ground in a pool of blood, and saw the infant... she snatched up the baby's leg with her mouth and rescued him from drowning," she said. When the boy finally breathed and cried out after the dog licked him on the face, Huang managed to call for help, said the social worker, who withheld her name. The mother declined to speak to the press.

Our third child has multiple disabilities, and attempting to compare our experience in both public and private settings is difficult; he had caring teachers in both settings who truly loved him and wanted him to succeed as much as possible.

Again, I realize that schools, children and teachers vary, and the following is just our family’s case.

The hardest part about special education when a child reaches age 3 is devising the IEP (Individual Education Plan.) By law, the plan is supposed to ensure the child receives a free, appropriate education based on needs according to disability. In reality, it sometimes turns into a “court case” from day one. If parents don’t know to send a request for evaluation via registered mail, the request is often “lost.” In our district, city and county children attended a self-contained, public preschool together. When our child entered the system, the city children who needed speech got it, but the county children did not. We were told that the county had not been able to locate a qualified speech therapist but were working on it. So, not wanting to make “enemies” from the beginning, we waited…and waited…and waited. Finally, we learned that perhaps it was a financial issue. The county district had less money for special ed than the city. Still, the school district was supposed to receive special ed funds for each child enrolled, and our child needed speech. It took a letter from a former speech therapist and communication that was “legally active” to get it done in less than two weeks. Voila! A speech teacher for the county kids!

The nicest part about public preschool was that I could leave my child there and trust the staff to know how to care for him. There were aides who could feed and handle him. They weren’t afraid of seizures, and volunteers were willing to learn everything and work with him one on one. He received both physical and occupational therapy and was part of circle activities. He progressed well in some areas such as the phenomenal task of learning how to get off a couch or out of bed without falling, but he mysteriously regressed in others, and the regressions only occurred in that setting.

For example, he could do simple tasks such as hold his own cup and drink from it. All along, I thought he was holding his cup until year-end evaluations gave him a zero. I knew I had shown the staff how he held his cup. Even his Sunday School teachers, who saw him just once a week, knew how to give him his cup. He also held his cup at the private preschool where he went twice a week. Turned out, either nobody at the preschool had ever tried to give him the cup, or if he dropped it, they just held it for him. And that, in the end, was a persistent problem. In a classroom where all the children had disabilities, and where he had some of the most severe disabilities, expectations were generally lower for him than in settings where all the other children were “normal.”

The low expectations carried over to discipline. Often, if he cried out, he was taken out of the classroom for lengthy periods. But at church and in private preschool, he was disciplined exactly like the other children. Timeouts were short, and he was taken back into class.

Speech is another area where he progressed better in a mainstream setting. While my “special child” has never been able to talk with any consistency, and he is considered nonverbal, his best “speech” occurred in settings with children who talked normally. As other children learned letter sounds in private preschool, he occasionally would make the letter sound before they would. He actually said a few words to identify objects he felt (he also has a visual impairment) such as “star,” or “ball.” Once, in Sunday School during a lesson about God’s creation in Genesis, he even uttered the word “God.” Another time, when some of the boys were acting out, and he was sitting quietly, he said, “bad.”

The private preschool experience was also good in that his teacher willingly followed his public preschool IEP and worked well with his vision specialist. Overall, we discovered that the best teachers of all – no matter what their educational background – were those who were willing, and we thank God for all those many teachers and aides (they are teachers too!) who willingly loved and taught our child. It truly takes caring, compassionate people to help these children work toward seemingly impossible goals, and for a child like ours, giving up on him would have been so much easier, because his progress was measured in “nanobites.”

It is difficult to find anything positive about NBC’s “The Book of Daniel.” After all, it portrays Christ’s church – including the minister’s family and church leaders – as hopeless hypocrites. If a TV show treated any other belief with such disrespect, accusations of “hate mongering” would be vociferous.

While the rest of my family drifted off to bed – noting that the “Book of Daniel” was boring and silly – I forced myself to sit through it. Since the show was so well publicized and already controversial, I wanted to decide for myself.

Actually, there were a few positives. It is the gospel truth that every human is a sinner. (That is why they need a Savior.) It is true that Christians aren’t anywhere near perfect. They sin and often backslide. It is true that Jesus loves everybody and wants a personal relationship with them. It is true that life is difficult and that Christ will “walk beside you” if you let Him. It is true that Christians will receive their reward in the afterlife.

The show did not present the reality of faithful Christian living. But it did present (to the maximum possible extent) the influence of popular culture on some of today’s churches. Even the disciples had to reprimand some of the early churches about pagan practices and instruct them in the ways of the Lord. The big difference here is that the Episcopal priest, while being the only character even attempting to follow Jesus (and a different Jesus this was!), accepts the popular culture views (plus some) of his liberal, mainline denomination. For example, he accepts that homosexuality is genetic and “normal.” The Bible calls it an abomination. He also accepts premarital sex as “normal.” The Bible says God created marriage for the sexual relationship.

It is a painful reality that Christians who allow popular culture to dominate their beliefs have lifestyles that are no different from those of the World. Some church members are “Sunday Christians” only. They attend services but have never actually repented and trusted Jesus as Savior and Lord. For them, church is nothing more than a social club. That appears to be the case in “The Book of Daniel.” It is basically a “dead church,” and even the church leaders are more concerned with outward appearance than inward change.

Should the show make the cut, it might be interesting to find out if anyone in Daniel’s family or congregation ever experiences a change of heart. Otherwise, I can’t see how overt degeneracy with no godly solutions can be entertaining or credible.

Media accuracy has been spinning downward for years and especially since the advent of 24-hour news networks. It seems almost nobody waits to "check it out if in doubt." The competition to be first takes precedence.

What has happened to attribution with quotes from real, live officials?

I stayed up late last night hoping to watch a miracle for those miners. Like everybody else, I thought the miraculous had occurred. Then Geraldo -- of all those journalists -- asked the obvious question: Who said this? (meaning what official stated the miners are alive?) But pandemonium had broken out, and that was end of it.

Apparently, mine company executives believed the miscommunication too. But 20 minutes later, they weren't so sure. So why did they wait almost three hours before saying anything? I can't accept that they just wanted to wait until they had the information correct. The correct information 20 minutes later was that they simply did not know whether one or all the miners were alive. That is what they should have immediately told the families and the media.

The truth, even if you have to say "I don't know," is always better than letting rumors fly. The mine company needed an experienced public relations person with integrity. The news organizations needed experienced journalists with integrity.

Six years ago tonight, the world waited with great apprehension to learn whether the Y2K Bug would zap the new Millennium into chaos.

Much time and money had been spent trying to update the technological world against the aberration. Somehow, the gurus of the 20th Century had failed to comprehend the looming of the next thousand-year era. Older computers couldn’t change their clocks from the 1900s to the 2000s, and fear fomenters had the world in their clutches.

We were warned that computer chips in cars could quit. Businesses could lose data. Checkouts in grocery and department stores might fail. Personal computers might lock up. The threat was real, and if the worst happened, an economic disaster would likely follow!

So the still-youthful Internet was full of websites offering survival tips and kits. Many even had online stores that sold a year’s supply of food. Some of it could be delivered to your door all vacuum-sealed and ready to eat like an MRE. This was war!

Now, I ask: Don’t you wonder whatever happened to the Y2K bug? After all, nothing happened when the clock struck midnight at the dawn of 2000. Like Cinderella, the Y2K Bug just disappeared. Later, everybody said that efforts to update were successful, and the problem had perhaps been overstated.

So, what did happen? It’s a story I’ve been waiting to tell for years. It’s kind of unbelievable, but I swear by the words of The Hunter and The Youngun, it’s the truth as they told it!

Just before New Year’s Eve 1999, The Hunter and The Youngun were over in the big, boggy Billow Swamp huntin’ whitetail deer. They were up in their tree stand where The Hunter was snoozin’ and The Youngun’ was playin’ Pokemon Red on the new Gameboy Color he got for Christmas. They were waitin’ til near about dusk dark when the deer usually move when all of a sudden, they heard movement and looked up to see a pair of CD-Rom eyes starin’ at them!

The critter had a computer-monitor head, a pair of speaker ears and a printer tray for a mouth! Its tongue, which they said was flappin’ in and out, looked like an old-fashioned floppy disk.

Well, The Hunter got enough gumption to ask the critter what he was and what he wanted. The critter then claimed to be the Y2K Bug!

Said he was on a flight around the world checkin’ things out.
Said he was lookin’ for the greenest, slimiest, sickest crud he could find to infiltrate the computer chips of the Earth.
Said gurus had near about cured his aberration, and he wanted filth that would be impossible to cure!

So he asked The Hunter what he thought about computers and what kind of crud was in that swamp. The Hunter didn't exaggerate. “I ain’t got no use for computers! I spent all day yesterday backin’ up files at work to escape the likes of you, and even when you ain’t around, there’s enough other bugs to crash the system and cause the headache of the century! You’re welcome to whatever germs you can find in this swamp! It’s got St. Louis Encephalitis skeeter larvae, wild hog droppins and all kinds of worms. Just help yourself!”

So, the Y2K Bug went about stickin’ his floppy tongue to test the scum. The Hunter then asked how he planned to go about infiltratin’ the chips. The Bug replied that if The Hunter would be kind enough to lend him a computer, he’d just spit swamp water into the motherboard and send that virus ‘round the world!

So The Hunter said, “Follow me home! My wife’s got a computer that ain’t worth nothin’ to me. I don’t see the use of it. Kill that thing, and maybe she’ll start workin’ ‘round the stove again, stirrin’ up some venison stew!”

Well, about this time, a deer wearing a trophy set of antlers stepped from behind a clump of trees. The Hunter whispered to The Youngun to get his gun ready. But The Youngun, being of the New Millennium Generation, had heard all the conversation and wasn’t too sure he agreed with his daddy about computers. Why, if that Bug spit venom into his mama’s computer, he couldn’t play that PC racing game. He might not even be able to play Pokemon Red on the Gameboy! And he surely wouldn’t have access to that Dragonball Z website on the Internet! And what about all those Russian missiles that were said to be aimed at us? Could the Bug zap them into space at midnight?

So, The Youngun took the safety off his rifle, sighted in the 12-point buck, then swung the barrel ‘round real quick at that levitatin’ Y2K varmint and blasted him to KINGDOM.COM! Then, he coolly aimed again at the fleeing buck and downed him, too!

Now, The Youngun has his trophy deer head mounted on the wall at his house to prove he bagged him, but there wasn’t anything left at all of that Y2K Bug to prove he killed him! The shot was just so close, it obliterated the critter forever!

Now, I’ve not told this story before, because I knew some of those Y2K hoarders spent years chokin’ down big caches of Spam they bought and didn’t need after all, and I didn’t want them getting’ all riled and comin’ after my youngun’!

The MAMA of The Youngun’