By Diane Rothschild
Baby lion is really a dog
A dog shaved to look like a lion prompted someone to call 911 in Norfolk, Virginia. The caller reported seeing a baby lion walking down the street “possibly looking for food.” When asked, the Virginia Zoo said it had both of its lions accounted for. The “lion” was actually Charles, a three-year-old labradoodle, who is groomed to look like the mascot for Norfolk’s Old Dominion University, according to his owner.
Viewers are missing their favorite TV show!
A power outage knocked out cable service one Sunday evening in parts of Connecticut, leaving Cablevision customers unable to watch television, including the hit show “Breaking Bad,” now in its final season. While most viewers chose to wait for service to be restored, others opted for a far less rational course of action: calling 911 to report the cable outage.
Hello, taxi? I need a ride to another hospital!
And then there are those patients who do not like the service or the accommodations at the hospital the fire department ambulance transported them to: They call 911 from their hospital beds to be transported to another hospital. One hospital tried to solve the problem by rerouting the calls made from the hospital room phones to stay inside the hospital. Ingenious patients quickly outsmarted the system by calling bedside from their cell phones.
Do you have true but unusual 911 calls? Share them with the Yenta at dianer@pennwell.com.
Photo found on Wikimedia Commons courtesy of Paul Mannix.
The Yenta
Diane Rothschild, a 24-year veteran of PennWell Corp., is executive editor of Fire Engineering and conference director of FDIC. She has a B.A. in English communications. She has been a yenta (look it up) for most of her life. If you have a story for the Yenta, e-mail dianer@pennwell.com.
