Paris, Dec 23, 2022 (AFP) - From a bull who thinks he's a horse to the secret weapon of male wasps... Your weekly roundup of offbeat stories from around the world.
- No bull, he's a showjumper -
When Sabine Rouas rides her bull Aston around the vineyards of the sleepy French village of Vieville-sous-les-Cotes, the traffic stops.
Even locals used to the 1.4-tonne (220-stone) beast can't help themselves but smile at the bull who thinks he's a horse.
The Charolais cross, who grew up with horses, also does a bit of showjumping, and is surprisingly elegant at dressage, prancing sideways like a thoroughbred Hanoverian.
"Watching me ride horses, Aston wanted to do the same thing," Rouas told AFP.
"Honestly, I didn't invent this. Look around the world, people ride all sorts of animals -- ostriches, camels, elephants."
But still it wasn't easy. She fell off Aston 38 times in the first three months before he became a real show pony.
"I can't make him do anything he doesn't want to do," Rouas said.
He's too bull-headed. "If he jumps over obstacles, it's because he enjoys it," she said.
- Let the high times roll -
To Bangkok where local cannabis lovers are still on a high after Thailand's first Cannabis Cup, where self-styled stoners competed to roll the fastest and most creative joint.
Hundreds of hopefuls were whittled down to 10 elite potheads, who vied for the crown in the most relaxed manner possible before a knowledgeable and increasingly blissed out crowd.
Thailand decriminalised cannabis in June, though exactly how legal weed is there is still, appropriately, rather vague.
- Bad Santa: 'You're St Nicked' -
It was a week before Christmas in a poor Lima neighbourhood when there was a knock at the door... Then fat Santa, his elves and three glamorous helpers proceeded to kick it in.
A gang of Peruvian drug dealers had a rude awakening when police in festive disguises raided their hideout armed with pistols and sledgehammers.
The suspects initially thought it was a joke, the police said, before it dawned that they would be spending Christmas behind bars.
In all 6,000 packets of cocaine paste, 104 of cocaine powder and 279 of marijuana were seized.
- 'Are you stealing from me?' -
A notorious woman cat burglar got the shock of her life when actor Robert De Niro turned up in his dressing gown after New York police caught her red-handed stealing presents from under his Christmas tree.
Unfortunately the cops weren't saying what De Niro -- who made his name playing a string of mobsters in such classics as "The Godfather", "Goodfellas" and "The Irishman" -- had to say to her, but we can guess.
- Little pricks -
For decades female wasps have been defamed as nasty and dangerous, the ones with the sting in their tail.
But Japanese researchers have discovered that male wasps have been hiding a secret weapon -- penis spikes.
And as researcher Shinji Sugiura of Kobe University discovered to his cost, all it takes is a little prick.
"Because I had believed male wasps to be harmless, I was very surprised to experience the pain," he told AFP.
Tree frogs know better, with one in three refusing to eat male wasps they were fed in an experiment. - AFP
