Sideswipe: Six is the new ten

Four short of a promised package....

Bathroom fan becomes a rat trap

Maggie Wanty wasn't ready to fold and buy a new bathroom fan for her rental without further investigation. "My tenant said the bathroom fan had stopped working. I thought I would take a look before calling an electrician. Noticing a lot of fluff on the fan grille I vacuumed this away, apart from a stubborn bit. The next job was to prise the grill off and see what lay behind. A seriously heavy lump of black fluff fell past me ... Startled by its density I looked closer. It was a recently deceased large black rat, luckily still firm, not mushy. The fan now works perfectly."

Ghost chips ... where have they all gone?

Not really dressed for the occasion

"The Minneapolis runner's encounter with the kilt-wearing tuba player reminds me of running up Beresford Street in Auckland City early one Sunday morning," says Rowan Hill of Mt Eden. "As I struggled up the steep hill a group of all-night partiers outside the bar on the corner of Pitt Street cheered me on. When I came alongside them a young woman in high heels and not much of a dress began running alongside me. Amazingly she stayed upright and kept up with me till we reached K Road when she started to flag a little and turned back to her friends ..."

Roadblock for the fully-insured

Police in Victoria, Australia, stopped several cars and ordered them to fill all the lanes on the road. The motorists thought it was a routine traffic check, but then realised police were using their vehicles, which they were still in, as a roadblock to stop a fleeing driver. It worked after the driver stopped but slammed into the cars. (Source: Reason.com)