ODDLY ENOUGH

ODDLY ENOUGH

Man arrested in didgeridoo attack on cab in California

CHULA VISTA, Calif.

A Southern California man has been arrested after police say he whacked a taxi with a didgeridoo in an argument over the fare.

U-T San Diego says the 31-year-old man and a woman were picked up Sunday night in Chula Vista then fell asleep during a 20-minute ride to a home.

Police Lt. Phil Collum says when they arrived, the man got into an argument with the cabbie over the fare. Collum says he went into the house and came out with a didgeridoo — a long, wooden instrument from Australia.

Collum says the man threatened the driver with it. The cabbie drove off, but the man reportedly chased the cab and whacked it several times with the didgeridoo, denting the vehicle. Arriving police arrested the man on suspicion of vandalism.

Images show woman on Chicago train with alligator

CHICAGO

After tracking down a small alligator skulking in a baggage-claim area at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, authorities are hunting for its traveling companion.

The Chicago Transit Authority has released a series of images showing a woman who they believe rode to the airport on a CTA Blue Line train with the 2-foot-long gator in the early hours of Nov. 1.

Thanks to one of the most-extensive surveillance systems in the United States, officials know this about the alligator’s trip to O’Hare: It boarded a train at the Pulaski stop — with the woman — at 1:17 a.m. The security camera captured the woman petting her little friend on her knee as she talked on her cellphone.

Blue Line rider Mark Strotman also snapped a picture of the woman and the alligator with his phone.

“She was sitting with it, petting it, letting people take pictures of it and telling everyone how she raised it from an early age,” said Strotman, 23, who initially thought the alligator might have been part of some “crazy Halloween getup” because it was on the train just an hour after Halloween turned into Nov. 1.

An hour later, the woman, presumably with the alligator, disembarked the train at the airport.

At 2:44 a.m., she is again recorded by the security cameras near the O’Hare stop, but with no reptilian companion.

An airport employee found the alligator later in the day under an escalator near a baggage claim.

Police captured the reptile by trapping it beneath a trash can.

The woman could be in trouble. Jason Hood of the Chicago Herpetological Society said the Illinois Dangerous Animals Act makes it illegal to own an alligator in the state.

Associated Press