Whoever said a cow wouldn't fight for its life?
Police and animal control officers ended up chasing one die-hard bovine all over downtown Garden City, Kan., Tuesday afternoon after it made a desperate dash for freedom while headed to the slaughterhouse, according to the Garden City Telegram.
Baffled city residents watched the 20-minute chase unfold.
"I thought it was a big dog at first," Elizabeth Pardo, who was washing a customer's hair at San Juan Beauty Salon when the four-legged fugitive ran by, told the Telegram. "Then I was like, 'Is that a cow?'"
A city worker managed to rope the cow, only to have it yank him out of his truck. Police then tried to coral the wily beast — which rammed the vehicles, leaving a cow-head-sized dent in the side of one, and got away.
The cow was finally lassoed and it took seven men to hold the lively animal down before it was loaded into a trailer.
"That was interesting," Garden City Police Officer Courtney Prewitt told the Telegram. "Only in Garden City."
— Thanks to Out There reader Aaron P.
Post Card Arrives 27 Years Too Late
ANAMOSA, Iowa (AP) — Evelyn Greenawald of Iowa has just learned how slow "snail mail" can be.
Last week she mysteriously received a postcard from her daughter in Germany, 27 years after it was mailed.
At the time, her daughter, Sheri, was beginning her opera career in Germany. She sent a postcard telling her mother how she fell in love with Europe and that she would be in Paris soon.
Greenawald, now 97 years old, finally received the postcard on Wednesday after it was forwarded to her care center in Iowa.
The card had aged significantly and even a magnifying glass couldn't bring the exact date into focus, but it was somewhere between 1975 and 1978.
Her daughter now lives in San Francisco.
— Thanks to Out There reader Greg M.
Chinese Find 4,000-Year-Old Noodle Dish
BEIJING (AP) — And you thought your leftovers were old. A 4,000-year-old bowl of noodles has been discovered at an archaeological site in western China — possible proof for the argument that China invented pasta before Italy.
"These are definitely the earliest noodles ever found," said Lu Houyuan, a researcher with the Institute of Geology in Beijing who studied the ingredients of the pristinely preserved pasta.
The discovery of the delicate yellow noodles in Minhe County in the province of Qinghai is reported in this week's edition of Nature magazine.
"Chinese people say Marco Polo brought noodles from China back to Italy and Italians say they had noodles before that," Lu said. "All this has been based on documentary material, on personal accounts and menus. But we've been unable to find any actual material — until now."
The fist-size clump of noodles was found inside an overturned bowl under 10 feet of sediment from a flood that researchers suspect wiped out the Qijia Culture of the late Neolithic era.
When researchers lifted up the bowl, they discovered the 20-inch noodles sitting atop an inverted cone of clay that had sealed the bowl, it said.
The noodles were made from a dough of two local varieties of millet — broomcorn and foxtail millet — rather than the more common wheat or rice. The dough was pulled into long strands before being boiled.
Rice noodles are popular in southern China while northerners rely mostly on wheat to make their noodles, dumplings and bread.
The excavation site area is located is now populated mainly by China's Muslim ethnic Hui minority. The region's poorer farmers reportedly still eat millet noodles, said contributing researcher Ye Maoling, though he has yet to try them for himself.
Lu and Ye say they plan to try making millet noodles like those found at the archaeological site themselves.
McDonald's in Japan Offers Shrimp Burger
TOKYO (AP) — Struggling to lure customers back amid increased competition, McDonald's is adding a new item to its menu in Japan: the shrimp burger.
The 270 yen ($2.40), burger, shown to reporters Friday and set to go on sale this month, is the latest effort by the Japan unit of the U.S. fast-food chain to win over Japanese palates — and spark sales.
McDonald's Japan is also testing other additions, including chicken salad and yogurt.
The hamburger chain with more than 3,700 stores in the world's second largest economy has tried everything from tofu burgers to advertising blitzes to coax diners back to the Golden Arches after the company posted a loss in 2002 amid the mad cow scare.
"Many people who used to come to McDonald's had stopped coming, but they're coming back," said Eikoh Harada, who took over as chief executive in 2004.
— Click in the photo box above to view a pic of the shrimp burger.
Turning Out for the Underpants Run
KAILUA-KONA, Hawaii (AP) — Some 100 runners wearing nothing but their skivvies turned out for the Underpants Run, an annual event in the days leading up to Saturday's Ironman World Championship.
"It's pretty much 'the' event now," joked founder and former professional triathlete Paul Huddle.
Not all triathletes would agree. More than 1,800 competitors are in Kona for the grueling Ironman, a 2.4-mile ocean swim, 112-mile bike leg through the lava fields and a full 26.2-mile marathon run.
Some of the international athletes who come to Hawaii to train in and around the village for the race in the week before the event sparked the idea for the fun run, which began in 1997.
"It was a reaction to the abhorrent and unbelievable practice of wearing Speedos around town, in the post office, the grocery store, even restaurants," Huddle said.
AIKEN, S.C. (AP) — Not even the sheriff is immune to crime in this community.
Someone broke into Sheriff Michael Hunt's personal truck and took his .40-caliber Glock handgun and a hunting knife, some keys, four quarters and a pack of AA batteries, deputies said.
The gun was secured in the truck and not visible from the outside, Hunt said, declining to elaborate.
He noticed the items were missing Wednesday morning as he got ready to leave for a meeting.
The sheriff said he locked the truck the night before, but it was unlocked when he went to get in it the next morning.
There has been a rash of car break-ins in Aiken County in the past few weeks, deputies said.
Compiled by FOXNews.com's Andrew Hard.
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