Forget Cow-Tipping, Pig-Tossing Is Newest Redneck Prank

Forget cow-tipping … pig-tossing is the newest trend among redneck pranksters.

West Point, Miss., has been seeing a rash of animal-tossing episodes, the Associated Press reports.

The most recent episode was the toss of a 60-pound pig over the counter of the Holiday Inn Express by Kevin Pugh, 20. No one was hurt, including the pig.

Pugh was fined $279, and given some very strange looks by police, who find the trend very bizarre.

"This was the silliest thing I've ever seen," McCaskill said. "Almost every officer we had was involved because the incidents kept happening at different hours."

McCaskill said there have been four late-night incidents involving animal-tossing at West Point businesses. Twice a pig was tossed; two of the incidents involved possums.

"He [Pugh] said it was a prank," McCaskill said. "It must be some redneck thing, because I haven't ever heard of anything like it."

All four of the incidents took place between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m., according to McCaskill.
Pugh is accused in another animal-throwing incident at a Hardee's restaurant.

In that case, he has pleaded innocent to disturbing the peace and will be appearing in city court on Dec. 19.

Thanks to Out There reader Lindsay S.

There's Only One Fat Man Who Fits Down Chimneys...

WESTMINSTER, Colo. (AP) — Santa must have a trick.

A man who was locked out of his house in this Denver suburb tried to get in by sliding down the chimney early Friday, but he got stuck and had to be rescued, authorities said.

The man, whose name wasn't released, fell about 12 feet down the shaft. Authorities said he was hurt but did not elaborate on the nature and extent of his injuries.

He convinced authorities it was his home, and there was no evidence he was breaking in, city spokeswoman Jennifer Galli said. Police were present but made no arrests.

Firefighters rescued the man by lowering a ladder into the chimney and lifting him to safety, Galli said.

Emergency workers were summoned at about 3:20 a.m., but it wasn't clear who called them.

At Least the Plastic Ones Don't Come Complete With Christmas Critters

ENGLEWOOD, Pa. (AP) — A woman who hurled last year's Christmas tree out into the yard when an opossum popped out, scaring her teenage daughter, said the family will stick with an artificial tree this year.

"My daughter's still afraid she'll look at the tree and see eyes looking back at her," Patricia A. O'Connor said. Though her husband, Michael, would like a real tree, she said, "We thought we'd give it one more year."

Daughter Mary Kathleen O'Connor was doing her homework by the tree a few days before Christmas 2005, when, she said at the time, "this head just popped up. ... I was thinking, 'Oh my God!' And I screamed."

The family came running, and called the state Game Commission. A wildlife conservation officer removed an 18-inch-long opossum and released it in the woods about five miles away.

That's Not What We Call 'Audience-Friendly'

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — Play or plague?

Producers of the Jean-Paul Sartre play, "The Flies," at Brown University will subject the audience to 40,000 fruit flies to bring to life the existentialist work about flies sent to plague the city of Argos in ancient Greece.

Production Workshop, the student-run theater producing the play, built a "cage" of netting 10-feet-high by 16 feet by 22 feet to surround the stage and about 70 audience members, and to keep the flies from infesting the theater.

"There's a sense of containment and quarantine and pestilence, which ties in with the play very well," said James Rutherford, a senior theater arts major who is directing the play.

Rutherford hit on the idea a long time ago, he said, but finally decided to do it when he talked with a friend who studies drosophila fruit flies at Brown's Biomed Center.

She told him it was easy to breed fruit flies, and it was.

They planned to have 30,000 flies at the play's opening Friday, but Rutherford said they got 10,000 extra because the flies reproduced better than anticipated.

The play tells the story of Orestes and Electra, and Rutherford said the flies represent the Greek furies and people's feelings that they are unable to act.

What's it like to be in an enclosed space with 40,000 fruit flies?

"Basically, like a co-op kitchen in the summer," Rutherford said.

Brown required the students to spray the netting with flame retardant to satisfy fire codes, and Rutherford said it was perfectly safe to sit with the bugs for the hour-and-45-minute play.

"They're not drawn to blood or anything, or people or meat. It's like vinegar and grapes and that kind of thing," he said.

Theatergoers know what they're getting into. Rutherford said the flies' presence has been heavily advertised, and anyone who reserves a ticket on a Brown online ticketing service is greeted with a disclosure:

"I am aware that there will be 30,000 live drosophila in the audience area at this production," reads the message, which is next to a box that must be checked before reserving tickets.

After the production's six-play run ends Monday, the theater will leave the net up and freeze the flies to death by turning down the heat. But Rutherford said people shouldn't feel sorry for them.

"They're vile," he said. "They're really disgusting little creatures."

Compiled by FOXNews.com's Hannah Sentenac.

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