Sideswipe: Carp and ride

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"At our bus stop this morning," writes a reader. "If you think it looks bad, you should have been there to smell it!"

Pretty gun bowlers, our guys

A group of friends playing cricket in Manchester say they were bowled over when a team of armed police turned up at their practice session. It turned out a passerby had mistaken the sound of the cricket balls hitting metal shutters on an industrial park for gunfire, and called police. (Source: Newslite.tv)

Please don't steal the penguins

Vandals are regularly climbing security fences at Granite Island, near Adelaide, to steal penguins. Penguin Centre co-ordinator Dorothy Longden wants the causeway to the island closed off at night to stop vandals. "We've had six penguins stolen, it's dreadful," Mrs Longden said. "People climb over the six-foot-high concrete fence." She thought thieves either set the birds free elsewhere - where they would not survive - or tried to keep them as pets. All of the problems, including bottles being thrown into the penguins' burrows, happened at night. "It doesn't matter how many security cameras we put up, it doesn't seem to help because the people wear hoods and we can't identify them," she said.

Telecom error means jack to me

Further to the unordered dryer incident ... Janine writes: "I once came home to find Telecom had been and installed a jack point in my bedroom. Turns out they had a blurred number 14 on the order phone. They headed to one of my neighbours who looked at the name and pointed them in my direction. They bumped into my mother (who lives next door) who let them in the house. Light dawned and I phoned the more recent arrivals with the same name across the road at number 14 ... But I got to keep the jack point!"

That's just not crickets

Glorious "yellow-yolked" eggs have nothing to do with gulping swarms of insects, says Greg Lawson. "Rich orange yolks are a function of the carotin in greenery such as the grass tips hens nibble on when truly free-ranging and are a marker of egg producers who respect the normal life conditions of the great domestic chook."

I never saw that coming ...

Many readers have had instant rejection experiences when applying for jobs. One writes; "I applied for a PA role with a hotel in Auckland city. The process was extremely detailed and included an online personality test. After over an hour of working on it, I got a rejection reply within 30 seconds. While that was annoying, the special thing was that it was a rejection for a job in Queenstown that I hadn't applied for ..."