The weekly weird

Published February 8, 2020

World’s largest toothpaste collection

A Georgia dentist, who holds the Guinness World Record for the largest collection of toothpaste, said his collection has grown to about 3,000 tubes.

Dr Val Kolpakov of Peach State Dentistry in Alpharetta said his toothpaste collection began when he was trying for a very different Guinness record — the largest collection of pulled teeth.

“When I started my dental career, I was pulling hundreds of teeth, then I remembered there was a Guinness record for number of teeth pulled,” he told. “I started looking online for that record and I could not find it.”

Kolapakov said he still has his collection of hundreds of extracted teeth, but he ended up finding information on toothpaste collecting and decided to collect toothpaste instead.

“All my patients, they’re pretty excited when I show them some unusual flavours that I have. And if they travel to certain countries, they bring me toothpaste from there,” he said.


Rescued owl too obese to fly

The Suffolk Owl Sanctuary in Britain said an owl found stranded in a ditch was initially feared to be injured but turned out to be merely too fat to fly.

The sanctuary said the owl, who they named Plump, weighed 8.6 ounces, about 1/3 heavier than the average weight for a healthy female of her species.

Officials said they initially suspected Plump may have lived in captivity or received food from humans, but her eating habits at the sanctuary showed she prefers the dark mice she would feast on in the wild, indicating her weight is “an unusual case of natural obesity.”

The area where Plump was found was discovered by rescuers to have an unusually high population of mice and voles. Plump was put on a two-week diet and lost nearly 1 1/2 ounces, enough to allow her to be released back into the wild.


Weird three-legged Atlantic creature

Recently, a video of a three-legged creature writhing on board a boat in front of the horrified fisherman who reeled it in emerged on social media. The animal, which appears to have tentacles like an octopus and a bulbous head, is believed to have been caught off Coney Island in Brooklyn.

The footage of the sea monster from the Atlantic captures the man holding the fishing line. As the bizarre creature, which has slits for gills, continues to twist and turn on the decking.

Some viewers have said they were concerned about the creature’s welfare while others pleaded for the animal to be thrown back in the water. Others have suggested the animal may be a clearnose skate, a species of cartilaginous fish. The clearnose skate is a similar brown-ish colour and lives in the north-western Atlantic Ocean but migrates inshore, depending on the time of the year. It is unclear what happened to the creature after the footage was taken.


Dog rides bus to park everyday

Eclipse, the black Labrador and Mastiff mix, doesn’t need a human to take her to the park because she is so bold and intelligent that she travels to the local dog park every day by herself, where she spends a couple of hours playing before catching the bus home again.

It all started when Eclipse’s owner Jeff was taking her to the park one day and for some reason he was taking time. But the dog didn’t want to delay her trip, so she left him there, hopped on the bus and waited a few stops before thanking the driver and jumping off at the downtown dog park.

Her owner realised that Eclipse knew the route like the back of her paw and soon trusted her enough to let her go alone, knowing she would ‘always return a couple of hours later’ at their home in Seattle.

Her owner told that all the bus drivers know her very well as she makes them smile. Even the police have given their approval as long as the bus drivers are okay with the arrangement.

Published in Dawn, Young World, February 8th, 2020

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