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Show ODDS ON ODDITIES Gun-toting Animals Predominate In Roundup of Freak Accidents IT'SU Features It used to be news when a man bit a dog. But in 1946 a dog shot a woman. And that's not all. A kanga-I kanga-I roo shot a man. So did a rab-j rab-j bit. A deer took a gun away ' from a hunter. A fish chased a fisherman off the road by sneezing in his face. A bee. a goose, a grasshopper, a mouse and a turtle ! got into the act, each in its own quaint way. And an ice cube knocked a woman cold. All this, and more, was turned j up by National Safety council in I its annual roundup of odd accidents. And if you haven't already begun I to suspect that things were a little i wacky in the year just past, read ' on! The Ice Cometh. j Miss Jeannette Esslinger was standing on the sidewalk in St. Louis l when an ice cube fell out of a hotel j window. It hit her squarely on the i head and knocked her colder than I the ice cube. At the hospital they ! treated her with an ice pack! Alice Martin, 52, and Emily Haus-er. Haus-er. CO, were zipping along the streets of Des Moines, Iowa, on a motor scooter one day, having a very fine time indeed, when what should loom up ahead but a corner. As they scooted adventurously around it, the scooter unceremoniously unceremoni-ously upset, depositing both ladies on the pavement with considerable force and little dignity. Sympathetic friends suggested the scooters trade in their vehicle for an automobile or, if youth must have its fling, a kiddie car. Really Burning Up. As Margaret Standring was walking walk-ing along the street in downtown Philadelphia, she was understandably understand-ably bewildered when two women and a man suddenly began beating her on the head She was burned up a little at this. But not as much as if they hadn't. For the not so-cold fact was that Miss Standring was on fire. A cigarette, tossed from a nearby building, had landed in her hair. No other cigarette can make this statement! Now, about the dog that shot the woman. It happened in Baltimore as Mrs. Ruth Patterson was enjoying enjoy-ing a bath. Her police pup, Toby, spied a gun on the washstand, put paw to pistol and let Mrs. Patterson Patter-son have it right in the bathtub or more precisely, right in the hand. In Fresno, Calif., Leonard Gur-aro, Gur-aro, 21, was completing what he hoped had been a satisfactory test tor a driver's license. As he nervously parked the car he stepped on the accelerator instead of the brake. The car leaped the curb and zoomed through the plate glass window of an office the office of the examiner who was giving Gur-aro Gur-aro the driving test. License denied. When the alarm rang in a Houston Hous-ton fire station this summer, Fireman Fire-man J. 11. Skeeters threw on his clothes and leaped for the quick-exit quick-exit pole. He missed and landed kerplunk on the first floor 20 feet ' below all 200 pounds of him. Sure, it was a false alarm. In Falrmount City, Mo., fire started start-ed in an auto from a short circuit, but thoughtfully set off the horn and I sounded Its own alarm. ! Equally as obliging was a blaze that started In a tavern at Hugo, Okla., burned oft the cap of a ; hydrant, released a stream of water and drowned itself. && More understandable was the strange case of the kangaroo that shot the man. This happened in Australia Aus-tralia when Arthur Crosbie shot a kangaroo through the hind legs and it fell on its back. Crosbie reloaded the rifle and put the butt on the kangaroo's neck to pin it down. The kangaroo reached up, twined a fore-paw fore-paw around the trigger and shot Crosbie through the arm. Prompted by the same motive of self preservation, a rabbit that lived Just outside Louisville, Ky., resented resent-ed the activities of William Humphrey, Humph-rey, a 16-year-old hunter. He stuck out a paw from Humphrey's game bag, pulled the trigger of Humphrey's Humph-rey's gun and shot him through the foot. Humphrey now carries a rabbit's foot for luck when he goes hunting. Guess what rabbit! r2dwurd M. Brown of Beverly Hills, Calif., saw active service in both the European and Asiatic theaters the-aters without a scratch. He decided de-cided to relax by going hunting. A companion shot a goose. It plummeted plum-meted down, struck Brown smack in the chest, knocked him flat, and inflicted injuries that kept him in the hospital 45 days. Many a bee has caused a traffic accident, but a super-busy one in Hammond, Ind., cracked up three autos by merely stinging the driver of one of the cars. The driver, Walter Sohl, drove into another car, which then crashed into a third machine. ma-chine. He Gets Buck Fever. Back in the meatless days Del Halstead licked his chops as he drew a sight on a big buck deer near Buckhorn station, Calif. Just as he released the safety catch on his rifle, he was hit from behind and sent sprawling. Another buck had bounded out of a thicket and landed, ala the marines, in the nick of time. Halstead not only lost his gun he also lost two bucks! Same Old Story. Put a mouse and a woman In the same car and something has to give. So when Mrs. Orson Rhcingold of Albany, N. Y., found she was sharing her car with a traveling field mouse, she Just did what came naturally. The car smacked into a pole and the field mouse returned to the field. Gustav Rlcbow of Milwaukee Is a kindly man. So when he and his wife found a turtle in their back yard, they put it in a box on the front seat of their car and started to take it to a nice homey place in the country. The turtle, confused or just plain ungrateful, slipped out of the box, crawled up Riebow's leg and bit him good and hard. Ricbow turned turtle and so did the car via a tree. Chips Pay Off. After that, anything must seem dull. But the case of Pete Bird of Shelbyville, Ky may be worth recording. When a mere boy, Bird was chopping a log on a farm when a chip flew up and struck him In the eye, bringing a cataract and blindness In 1040 Just 42 years later Bird again was chopping wood. Again a chip flew up and hit him in the eye, tearing the cataract loose and restoring sight. Then there was the case of the sultry pocketbook. It belonged to Miss Janice Peterson of New York City, who traced smoke to a drawer in her office desk and found a cigarette cig-arette lighter in her purse had. flicked on. "And It hardly ever , 1 works when you want it to," she I moaned. A $50,000 boom hit the rural community com-munity of Plymouth, Wis., when 18-year-old Robert Marth shot at a . sparrow perched on a farm wagon, missed the sparrow, hit the wagon and set off its 1,300-pound load ol dynamite. Casualties 650 windows, 1 wagon and 1 sparrow. Don't We All? Stanley Szot of East CI. cago, Ind., entered the dentist's office ' with a toothache and left with a headache. As the dentist reached ' for the forceps, lightning struck the office building and a hunk of plas-ter plas-ter from the ceiling conked Szot on the head, where the novocain hadn't reached. j Three-year-old Ernest Lledemann of Chicago tumbled into the Chi-1 cago river from a bridge high above. As he hit the water, his clothing caught on a nail that pro-, truded from the piling and held his head above water until he was res- j cued. I Close runner-up for fall fashions was Abraham Wilson of New York. As Wilson was lowering a couch 1 from a four-story shaftway in a i warehouse, he tripped in the rigging I and he and the couch plunged down- j ward. He caught up with the couch J as they passed the third floor. The force of the impact wedged the 1 couch against the shaft wall, where ; surprised workers found Wilson 1 curled up cozily. Another Fish Yarn. Most fantastic of all, perhaps, is the celebrated case of the sneezing salmon. James Mantakes of La Grande, Ore., caught the salmon, tossed it in the rear of his car and started for home to show the folks. As the car chugged along, desert dust blew into the salmon's gills, and it sneezed. Yes, it did. This startled Mantakes. He glanced back, saw nothing but a fish and shrugged off the sound. Another An-other sneeze. Mantakes whirled around, this time to see an angry salmon on the back of the seat, glaring balefully at him with bloodshot eyes. As if that weren't enough, a grasshopper chose that moment to come flying in through the window. The salmon abandoned Mantakes, lunged at the grasshopper, grasshop-per, missed and fell back in the lap of the now thoroughly disorganized disorgan-ized driver. Mantakes gave himself over entirely en-tirely to subduing the salmon. The car went crashing oft the road. The salmon sneezed spitefully once or twice more and succumbed. Victims of All Ages. Youngest victim of an odd accident acci-dent in 1946 undoubtedly was a baby girl who was shot before she was born. Her mother, Mrs. Arthur Laughton, was shot in a hunting accident at Winthrop, Me., and the baby was born prematurely, a bullet bul-let wound in her left thigh. When most people were desperately desper-ately trying to find auto tires. Stanley Stan-ley Yanick of Chicago Just stood still on the sidewalk and one came rolling right up to him. Unfortunately, Unfor-tunately, it had a wheel attached, and it flattened him. The tire was the wrong size anyway. When Mrs. Ralph Gilmore of Philadelphia Phil-adelphia heard a certain program coming in on her radio, she hurried hur-ried across the room to turn up the volume, tripped on a rug and fell, suffering minor Injuries. The program Mrs. Gilmore fell for? A broadcast on home hazards by National Na-tional Safety council! |
