Animals, Birds And Insects Cause Many Of The Queer Accidents

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 12, Issue 59, 23 June 1948, Page 7

Animals, Birds And Insects Cause Many Of The Queer Accidents

Paul Jones, of the U.S. National Safety Council, rustled through his records of last year’s odd accidents and found that animals, birds and insects had stolen the show. Here are some of the queer things that happened in 1947. Firemen in Camden, N.J., spent an hour looking for the source of smoke that poured through the home of Mrs Marie Baughter. They found it—a bird’s nest under the roof. A sparrow had carried home a lighted cigarette. The celebrated incident of the cantankerous cockroach occurred in Detroit and involved John Nantico, a bakery employee, Nantico said he was ascending stairs made slippery by spnk cake-frosting when he looked intqnhe leering eyes of the biggest cockroach any man ever saw. Nantico aimed a kick at the ’roach with his right .foot. The ’roach ducked. Nantico’s left and anchor foot slipped in the frosting and he fell end over end to the floor. His kicking leg was broken. A lot of hunters shoot deer; but a dead deer shot Clarence Gerkin,

of Hudson, Colo. Gerkin had shot the deer and was preparing to dress it when a reflex kick by the animal hit his gun and discharged it. The bullet tore through Gerkin’s left arm. At least once a year a mouse runs a car into a ditch by merely sharing the car with a woman driver. But this time the mouse selected an Army truck in Daventry. The driver, 19 year old Christine Woodward, had been trained as a member of the British Women’s Land Army, to face bombs, bullets, and battle without flinching. But they hadn’t thought of training her to face a mouse. So when the little animal scampered across Miss Woodward’s toes, she just did what came naturally. She fainted. The truck went into the ditch, Miss Woodward went to the hospital, and the mouse swaggered back to the field. A merry group of bees boarded a tram in Cincinatti through an open window and took an interest in motorman Earl Armstrong. As Armstrong frantically hit out at the bees his tram bumped a motor car, which rammed the rear of another. Meanwhile, buzz, buzz, buzz went the trolley.