ODDLY ENOUGH

ODDLY ENOUGH

Houston firm offers space flights for pet remains

HOUSTON

A Houston company that already sends human remains out of this world will offer the same memorial space flights for four-legged loved ones.

Celestis Inc. recently announced that rockets carrying the cremated remains of dogs and cats will start this fall.

Spokeswoman Pazia Schonfeld says the cost will be about the same as for human remains sent into space and returned, starting at about $995.

Celestis Pets is working with a California company, Into the Sunset Pet Transition Center of San Diego, for pet cremations.

Celestis for years has offered a rocket service that takes partial human remains into space and brings them back, including ashes of “Star Trek” TV show creator Gene Roddenberry.

Man finds rare calico lobster, gives it to NH aquarium

HAMPTON, N.H.

A fisherman has caught a rare lobster that’s bright orange with dark blue spots.

Josiah Beringer found the calico lobster in a trap July 23 in the mouth of New Hampshire’s Hampton Harbor.

He donated the 1.5-pound, 5-year-old male lobster to the Explore the Ocean World Oceanarium in Hampton.

Beringer told the Portsmouth Herald that the lobster was found in an area known as Washerwoman Rock, an area between two rocks that gets its name from its “really rough” and “washing machine”-like waters.

The aquarium’s Ellen Goethel says calico lobsters are the second-rarest in the world, after albino lobsters.

She says the spots are the result of a genetic pigmentation mutation occurring in 1 in every 30 million to 50 million lobsters.

Grandma thanks Idaho trooper for traffic stop

BOISE, Idaho

A woman who got a speeding ticket while on a recent vacation to Idaho wrote a note to the Idaho State Police thanking the trooper for the kindness he showed her grandchildren during the stop.

KBOI-TV reported that the Idaho State Police shared the note recently.

The woman wrote that Officer Mike Nielsen made the stop a good experience for her grandchildren by talking with them calmly and giving them stickers.

She says she wasn’t left out and got her “very own sticker shock.”

The letter did not say how much she was fined.

Associated Press