oddly enough

oddly enough

Central Pa. farmer’s corn crop yields 4-headed ear

HANOVER, Pa.

When farmer Ben Klunk tells people about the mutant corn he found, they’re all ears.

Klunk said Wednesday he discovered an ear of sweet corn with four heads on his central Pennsylvania farm and has been keeping it in his refrigerator.

Klunk said that when he pulled the corn out of the crop, he initially thought there was mud holding it together, but his wife said that wasn’t the case.

“It started out as one,” Marie Klunk said, “and then it split, and then another one split.”

The farmer, who’s 81, said he’s never seen corn multiply in such a way: He’d never found a double- or triple-headed ear of corn, let alone a quadruple one.

The Klunks said they don’t plan to eat the corn, which was pulled from their farmland in Hanover, 20 miles southwest of the state capital, Harrisburg, and first was reported by The Evening Sun newspaper. They said if it stays fresh for 10 more days, they’ll enter it into a contest at the South Mountain 4-H Fair.

Prowling Pa. ninja says he was trying to help cops

JOHNSTOWN, Pa.

Everybody agrees that a 19-year-old Pennsylvania man dressed up as a ninja and lurked near homes, but they disagree whether that’s a good idea — or legal.

Todd Kapcsos of Johnstown was in court Wednesday to waive his right to a preliminary hearing on charges of loitering, prowling at night and disorderly conduct.

Police said Kapcsos frightened some elderly residents who saw him sneaking around while carrying a black baseball bat and wearing a hooded sweat shirt, another long shirt, a mask and a pair of gloves — all of them black.

He contends he was just trying to help police catch bad guys.

“I dressed up in all black, snuck around, went through bushes,” Kapcsos told WJAC-TV. He claimed to be practicing “ninja moves” including rolling into a ball so he’d appear to be a rock hidden in the shadows.

“There’s not enough police officers,” he said. “The community should do something rather than sit back.

But one neighbor, Chris Trevino, told the TV station, “It looked more like he was trying to break into homes, not like he was gonna be a ninja and save the world.”

That night, July 15, Trevino saw Kapcsos “running like a ninja, not like a normal person jogging. He was going back and forth creeping.”

So she called the police.

“The ninja ran across the alley and right into the arms of a police officer,” Trevino said.

Kapcsos was lurking in the Moxham section of Johnstown, about 60 miles east of Pittsburgh. Several high-profile crimes have occurred in the neighborhood in recent months, including three of the city’s five homicides. The last one occurred Aug. 6 — a stabbing at a car wash — about three weeks after Kapcsos was arrested.

Associated Press