November 20, 2008 11:13 am
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Bentley did it!
A dog left inside a running van put the vehicle in drive, causing it to crash into a Long Island coffee house.
Suffolk County police say no one was injured in the incident, which damaged the glass window and some patio furniture at Cool Beanz coffee shop in St. James.
Police say a 60-year-old Port Jefferson resident left the van running while he went into the shop. His dog, Bentley, somehow knocked the controls.
— Meanwhile, police in Dallas are looking for an irate pet lover so intent on liberating his lost cat that he wielded a bat to fend off animal shelter employees.
Dallas Animal Shelter manager Kent Robertson says the man found his missing gray and blue short-haired cat at the shelter, where it had been brought by someone who thought it was a stray.
He blew his stack when told he had to pay a $132 fee to take his cat.
Police say the man returned Monday, loaded his cat into a carrier without paying the fee, and threatened the staff with the baseball bat. No one was injured.
Most people thank shelter workers. Says Robertson: “This was pretty extreme.”
The man could be charged with aggravated robbery and aggravated assault.
Police Senior Cpl. Kevin Janse says police have a clue — the man signed the shelter guest book before fleeing.
— From Framingham, Mass., comes word today that authorities are trying to figure out who keeps leaving chunks of meat on the town common, and why.
Police say residents have been finding butcher-quality cuts of meat on the common for about five weeks. In the most recent incident, a resident discovered a large piece of raw, unwrapped meat, along with what appeared to be a liver and some bones on Tuesday.
Police Lt. Paul Shastany says someone may be trying to poison animals, so the meat has been sent for testing.
He says police are counting on the public for help in solving the meat mystery.
— And finally, it’s hard to avoid seeing an advertisement, even at lunch.
Businessmen in Mambai, India, will now be getting ads delivered with their home-cooked lunches.
Some 5,000 of the city’s famed lunch box delivery men — or dabbawallas — have traded their loose shirt-and-trouser uniforms for T-shirts advertising a mutual fund.
Rather than eating out at restaurants many of Mumbai’s office workers pay to have a cooked meal delivered from their homes. Getting those meals to the city’s army of office workers is the job of the dabbawallas, who deliver to some 500,000 customers each day.
Jaideep Bhattacharya, the head of marketing at UTI Asset Management, said the delivery men were the perfect way to advertise the company’s mutual fund at a time when finances were strained.
“We found the dabbawallas a great way to reach our target audience at the lowest possible cost,” he said Thursday.
It’s also a boon for the dabbawallas, who have become an integral part of Mumbai’s landscape, often seen on bicycles and trains balancing wooden crates filled with lunch boxes on their heads.
Other companies have also expressed interest in the advertising, said Shopan More, president of the Dabbawallas’ Association.
“Our main business is delivering lunch,” More said. “But of course since there is so much interest, we will do it.”
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