Mid-Daily Items: 'Smooch' lures pretty hitchhiker

July 25, 2008 10:22 am

A man in northeast Pennsylvania just couldn’t resist picking up the pretty hitchhiker.
Jerry Dimick and a friend were driving along Route 307 near Clarks Summit on Wednesday when they spotted a peacock standing by the edge of the road.
Dimick says he stopped and “went ‘smooch, smooch, smooch, smooch’ and the bird came over,” so he “reached out and grabbed him.”
With no room in the back of his pickup truck, Dimick put the peacock in the front seat. He says, “The bird was sitting in between the two of us. He sat there.”
Dimick took the bird to his home in Taylor and is trying to find it a safe place to live. So far, he’s had no luck with the Game Commission, animal control, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, or the local zoo.

— After catching one of two people wanted in a series of break-ins, deputies in North Carolina let their fingers do the chasing to catch a second suspect.
Catawba County sheriff’s Maj. Coy Reid says that when deputies caught a 16-year-old suspect on Wednesday, they confiscated his cell phone. Soon, a text message arrived asking the teen if he had been caught.
The deputies typed “no” in response. After a few more messages, the sender said he would try to pick up his friend, not knowing he was in custody.
Deputies waited in an area where several break-ins had occurred. They say they arrested the 17-year-old texter after finding him in a car with three other people.
Both teens face several charges, including larceny and breaking and entering.

— New Yorkers have long been going to see “Shakespeare in the Park.” Now they can see Shakespeare on the subway.
Two drama students are spending the summer performing the balcony scene from “Romeo and Juliet” in exchange for tips from commuters.
Peter Vack and Troian Bellisario attend the University of Southern California. They say they’ve timed their performance to last from one stop to the next and were once handed $20 by an onlooker. Most tips range from pennies to $5.
Vack says the city’s subway cars are good performance spaces because “you have a different captive audience every 30 seconds.”

— Nothing will heal a broken heart like $150,000.
That’s how much a Hall County jury has ruled Wayne Gibbs owes his ex-fiancee, RoseMary Shell, for breaking off their engagement. Shell sued for breach of contract after she left her $81,000-a-year job in Pensacola, Fla., in 2006 to move to Gainesville, Ga., and be with her fiancee.
Two months later, Gibbs told her he was having second thoughts. He broke up with her in March 2007, leaving her stuck in Gainesville with a $31,000 job. The jury award equals one year of her old salary, plus bonuses and benefits. Shell told The Times of Gainesville she is “thrilled.”

- And finally, the bubble might have burst for off-Broadway's "Gazillion Bubbles Show."
Someone has stolen the show's specialized soapy bubble solution, which takes two months to make.
A show spokesman says 3.4 tons of bubble solution and 6,000 toys went missing in the June 10 break-in at a Hoboken, N.J., warehouse.
The show has only six weeks worth of solution on hand to make the air-filled globes of soapy film.
The interactive show was created by renowned bubble artist Fan Yang. It features dazzling light effects, lasers and lots of bubbles — some so intricate or big they have smoke, other bubbles or even people inside them. Yang has put up to four children in one bubble.

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