WEIRD, WEIRD

Thieves grab world's biggest rabbit

The world's biggest rabbit has been stolen. Darius, a 10-year-old Continental Giant, measures in at four feet three inches and was snatched from the rear garden of a property in Worcestershire, England.

Breeder Annette Edwards believes that jealous rival rabbit owners could be behind the theft of Darius, who was named as the world's longest rabbit back in 2010.

Edwards told The Sun newspaper: "There are some very jealous people around.

"I have my suspicions who is behind this and I'm afraid to say it must be someone with prior knowledge.

"The thieves came over a farm fence, unbolted Darius's large kennel, and took him from his secure area.

"We move him between the kennel and a large summer house, to keep thieves guessing. But someone knew what they were doing. He was stolen to order."

Edwards is concerned for Darius' welfare as he has a special diet that the thieves may not know about.

She said: "Darius is on a special diet and I am worried he won't survive without it.

"The thieves won't know how to look after him."

-----------------

Town's name deemed offensive

Facebook has taken down the official page for the French town of Bitche. A local broadcaster has reported that the page was taken down for the area's "offensive" name and has forced the authorities to create a new page under a separate name.

The town's page fell foul of the social media site's algorithms last month and has not been reinstated despite appeals, with a new page named after the town's postcode, Mairie 57230, launched in its place.

An explanatory post reads: "The town's official page has been removed by Facebook. We have appealed, but for the moment it is still invisible. The appeal process can take several months, so we have created this page to continue communicating with you on social networks."

Valerie Degouy, a spokesperson for Bitche, said: "I appealed on 19 March, but [the page] hasn't reappeared again. I have tried every way to contact Facebook, through the different forms, but there is nothing more to do."

----------------

Man spends days cleaning milk bottles

A collector with 23,000 milk bottles has used lockdown to clean them all. Steve Wheeler has amassed the vast collection of bottles from across the world over the past 40 years and decided to give them all a scrub after getting "bored" during the pandemic.

Wheeler, 72, spent five weeks cleaning the milk bottles -- rinsing an average of 657 per day as he completed the task in eight-hour shifts.

He told The Sun newspaper: "I just got bored. I thought it would be a good opportunity to clean them.

"I washed each one in a bowl of water and put it on the side to drain, and popped it back in place.

"They're all sparkling now."

Despite his enormous collection of bottles, Wheeler confessed that he doesn't actually like milk.

He explained: "It makes my stomach churn. The thought of drinking the stuff is abhorrent."

-------------

Dummies race for free pass at resort

A ski resort has held a race for dressed-up dummies. The Mount Ashland resort in the US state of Oregon held the annual Dummy Downhill event at the weekend, which featured 20 dummies created by members of the public racing down a slope.

Competition rules required each dummy to be mounted on either two skis or a snowboard with the winners given a prize of a free pass to the resort.

Mount Ashland General Manager Hiram Towle revealed that this year's race, which was won by a dummy called The Flying Ace, saw a record number of entries.

He told KOBI-TV: "We judge them on creativity, and then we're going to judge them on their run, their craft, their air time.

"People love it, it's great for the kids; you don't even have to be a skier or a snowboarder, you can just come to watch us demolish these dummies off of this big jump."