A South Carolina rooster has either a death wish or a morbid sense of humor.
Employees at the Bluffton, S.C., Chick-fil-A (search) franchise noticed a rooster strutting around inside the restaurant on June 25, reports the Carolina Morning News.
"We let him out, but he keeps hanging around," said manager Carlton Beall.
Beall and his co-workers feed "Little Truett" — named after the fast-food chain's founder, S. Truett Cathy — bread and biscuits, but no chicken.
It wouldn't be right to feed the rooster "his own kind," explained Beall.
Chick-fil-A, pronounced "Chick Fillet," has over 1,000 franchises in 37 states, mostly concentrated in the Southeast. Its motto: "We didn't invent the chicken, just the chicken sandwich."
A firefighter told the franchise's owner, Brett Swanson, that he'd seen the rooster crossing a federal highway to get to the restaurant on the other side the day before his grand debut.
"We thought maybe someone would take him home," Swanson told the newspaper. "He seems friendly."
Chick-fil-A employees figure "L.T." might be a college mascot gone astray, or possibly an angry avian peeved at the sandwich chain's "Eat Mor Chikin" ad campaign, which features relaxed cows advising humans on dietary choices.
"It's nothing but a friendly protester," joked manager David White.
— Thanks to Out There reader Tom H.
Tourist Spectacularly Loses Rental-Car Deposit
A tourist visiting the Seattle area took an unexpected swim Monday — when he threw his rental car into reverse and shot off the back of a Washington State ferry.
The ferry Chelan had just docked at Anacortes (search), about 50 miles north of Seattle, on a run from the San Juan Islands when a crewman directed the driver to drive up a ramp and onto the dock.
"I told him to stop, and he did, and he played with the shifter and for some reason he was disoriented or something and he just gunned it into reverse," Pierson Smith told KING-TV of Seattle.
The car picked up speed, went through stanchions at the rear of the vessel, teetered over the edge for a few moments, then dropped into the water.
"My deck partner said 'Stop! Stop!' and I heard 'Man overboard!' as he was radioing it in," crew member Greg Tryson told KING.
The car drifted for about 40 yards before sinking, allowing the driver, an unnamed 38-year-old New Yorker, to climb out and swim to safety.
"He was obviously a tourist, and it was a new car for him," Washington State Ferries (search) spokeswoman Susan Harris told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
Ferry service was held up for nearly two hours as divers took a look at the car, now 50 feet down, to assess risk to surface traffic.
A lightly loaded Chelan finally pulled out over the aquatic auto, and it and its sister ferries planned to use adjacent slips until the car was hauled up.
The driver went to Island County Hospital (search) suffering from hypothermia and a broken arm, Harris said.
No information was available on the driver's name, what kind of car he had and where he'd rented it.
— Thanks to Out There readers Barb M. and Steve C.
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. (AP) — A Daytona Beach man has been sentenced to 60 days in prison for stealing a judge's wallet and going on a shopping spree.
Twenty-year-old Shawn Mayo pleaded no contest to a charge of grand theft for the February incident.
Police say Mayo and his girlfriend — Kisha Smith — spent more than $1,000 at Wal-Mart stores on Circuit Judge John Watson's credit card.
The suspect was caught after he put his own signature on the credit-card receipt instead of attempting to sign Watson's name.
Police said the wallet was snatched from Watson's chamber. Investigators say Smith was a cleaning woman at the courthouse at the time of the theft.
Dead Bodies Turn Out to Be Statues
JOSEPH, Ore. (AP) — Dannie Eaves got busted for hauling some busts.
Eaves, an employee at Joseph Bronze in Joseph, Ore., had six busts in his pickup truck Wednesday when several motorists mistook the Nebraska-bound sculptures for dead bodies and called the police.
"I was going down the freeway and a sheriff pulled up behind me," Eaves said of last Wednesday's incident.
Eaves was asked to step to the back of the truck.
The officers found a life-sized sculpture of a firefighter in the truck bed. Three shoulder-sized busts of former governors were in the truck's cab, a fourth was placed on the floor boards and a fifth was with the firefighter sculpture.
"I explained to him they were statues," Eaves said. "We all had a good laugh. I bet they were really relieved."
The rest of the trip to Evanston, Wyo., about 650 miles from Joseph, Ore., was uneventful, Eaves said. The sculptures were relayed by another person with a canopied truck the rest of the way to Nebraska.
We've Got Dibs on 'THING 1' and 'THING 2'
SPRINGFIELD, Mass. (AP) — A campaign to get applications for "The Cat in the Hat" vehicle license plates, which started in the hometown of Dr. Seuss (search), will branch out into eastern Massachusetts, say officials of the Springfield Museums.
Before production of the commemorative plates can begin, the state's Registry of Motor Vehicles requires a minimum of 1,500 preorders.
"By the end of the summer, we hope to be much closer to the 1,500," Chrystina Geagan, marketing and development coordinator for museums, told The Republican newspaper of Springfield in an interview published Tuesday. "I don't think we'll have any problem making it."
The commemorative plates cost $40 each, of which $28 will go toward Dr. Seuss programs for children and the maintenance of the Dr. Seuss National Memorial Sculpture Garden (search) in Springfield.
Officials said 260 Springfield drivers have signed up for the plates, available for drivers who are registered in Massachusetts.
This month, 40,000 application forms for the "The Cat in the Hat" license plate will be inserted in the Telegram & Gazette, which serves Greater Worcester, according to Geagan. On May 17, applications were distributed in The Republican in Western Massachusetts.
Springfield is the hometown of Theodor Geisel, who wrote the "The Cat in the Hat" and other books for children under the pen name of Dr. Seuss.
Compiled by Foxnews.com's Paul Wagenseil.
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