The Book of the Bizarre: Freaky Facts and Strange Stories (11 page)

When English writer Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) died, his heart was kept apart when his body was cremated. The idea was to bury it in Stinsford, England, the home of his beloved childhood church and his family's burial plot. All went according to plan until his sister's cat leaped up onto her kitchen table, snatched the heart, and ran off into the woods with it.

THAT'S A LOT OF KITTY LITTER

The record for ownership of the most cats goes to Jack and Donna Wright of Kingston, Ontario, according to the
Guinness Book of World Records
. The couple owns a staggering 689 felines, many descended from the cat that started it all: a tabby called Midnight, whom Donna picked up in 1970.

LIFE SAVER

A couple named Irma and Gianni lived in a village near Mount Vesuvius in the 1940s. One evening in 1944, their cat became agitated and tried to get the couple out of bed by jumping on them, scratching, and eventually chasing Gianni around the room. Gianni was enraged and wanted to throw the cat outside. Irma, however, felt that the cat was trying to tell them to leave. She insisted that they pack some clothes and get out. Soon after, Vesuvius erupted, covering their village in lava and killing many people. Irma and Gianni's cat had saved them from that fate.

CRUEL AND UNUSUAL PUNISHMENT

As recently as the late nineteenth century, women accused of adultery in Turkey were tied in bags with live cats and thrown into the ocean.

IS FIDO PSYCHIC?

Many people claim their pets have extrasensory perception (ESP), and a Russian experiment proved it. To test dogs' mind-reading abilities, the scientists conducted 1,278 trials that measured the canine's response to unspoken commands. The dogs responded correctly to the unspoken commands more than 50 percent of the time. The odds of this phenomenon being mere chance, claims Dennis Bardens, the author of
Psychic Animals
, are billions to one.

THE ANNUAL FIRE ANT FESTIVAL:
A WEIRD CELEBRATION

In South Texas, the fire ant (red ants that swarm and bite) is a real problem. But in Marshall, Texas, the people decided that since they couldn't get rid of these pests, they might as well have some fun with them. So they started the annual Fire Ant Festival. Special events include the fire ant call, fire ant roundup, and a fire ant chili cookoff in which entrants must certify in writing that their ingredients include at least one fire ant. The ending to the festivities is the Fire Ant Stomp, which is not an attempt to squash the ants, but an old-fashioned street dance.

“Therefore I will wail and howl, I will go stripped and naked: I will make a wailing like the dragons, and mourning as the owls.” —MICAH 1:8

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