KEY POINTS:
Ruapehu tourist Max Rigg took this picture outside a cafe/bar at Ohakune.
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As a real estate agent Angela Signal has experienced hundreds of final inspections, but she never came across anything like this, until she sold her own house. She writes: "Last Wednesday I got
a call about 8.45pm from a fireman saying he was at a rental property I owned. Shock horror - I had just sold it and the final inspection was at 11am the next day. I thought the tenants must have had a fire, but no. I was told that a very fat cat had fallen down the boarded-up chimney (it was the night of all those storms) and no one could get it out. It had been there for two days. (The tenants didn't own a cat so took no notice at first). I was asked if I wanted the firemen to pull the bricks from the chimney outside, in which case the chimney could fall down, or they said they could put a hole in the lounge wall to get the cat out. I panicked - what about my inspection the next morning? In the end we decided to use a Stanley knife instead of a skill saw, in case we hurt the cat. I couldn't bear to watch - the cat or the wall - so I left the firemen to it. Result, two big holes in the lounge wall, now being plastered and a very pregnant cat now safe."
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Gerard Mungo, 7, says he was just sitting on his dirt bike - with the motor off - when Baltimore police handcuffed him and took him to a police station, where they photographed and fingerprinted him. Mungo's mother adds that police pulled her son up by his collar and dragged him off the bike. The official charges say Mungo was illegally riding the bike on city streets. (Source: Reason.com)