Pet parrot leads police to killer

Hercule Poirot ranks with great fictional detectives such as Sherlock Holmes. While Sherlock was the creation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Hercule Poirot was created by one of the popular detective writers - Agatha Christie.

Ironically another character by the name of Hercule has entered the world of crime detection and has achieved an unbelievable and miraculous feat. In this news story the character Hercule is a pet parrot living in the household of Vijaya Sharma, who is the Editor of a Hindi daily published in Agra, India.

When Vijaya came home after work that day, the scene he saw shattered his whole world. He found his loving wife Neelam lying in a pool of blood, dead. Police were informed and it was revealed that Neelam had been stabbed to death and also the police found their pet dog too had been killed. But the police had no initial leads on the killing, until Hercule the parrot provided a key clue.

Vijaya while contemplating about their life together observed that his pet parrot too was in a bad mood and was showing unsettling behaviour whenever the name “Ashutosh” was mentioned in conversation. Ashutosh Sharma Goswami was Vijaya's nephew and was a frequent visitor to his house.

When Ashutosh's name was mentioned the parrot started screeching and since he could utter some Hindi words, start shouting “Usnemara, Usnemara[He has killed].

After this the family informed the police, who took Ashutosh into custody. On questioning he confessed to the crime.

Ashutosh told the police that along with his accomplice, Ronnie Massey entered Sharma's house and forced Neelam to hand over cash and valuables at the point of a dagger. Afraid that she would reveal his identity Ashutosh stabbed her to death. He also stabbed Vijaya's pet dog to death when he started barking at him.

Both of them have been arrested and charged with murder and looting. Agra SSP Shalabh Mathur said: We got a lot of help from the parrot, Hercule, to zero in on the murderer”.

Saved by the Bible

You may call it luck or divine intervention but the fact remains that he was saved by the Bible he had in his chest pocket.

Ricky Waggoner, 49, had to stop his Dayton-Ohio bus on the side of a road after detecting an electric problem. When he was looking into the problem all of a sudden three goons approached him and shot him twice which appeared to be an ambush. He was shot three times and two of the bullets were stopped by a Bible that was in his chest pocket.

After the first two shots Waggoner fought back tried to wrangle the pistol out of the suspect's grasp. The gun went off as the two struggled and Waggoner was hit in the leg. Then a second suspect stabbed him in the left arm.

The courageous Waggoner picked a pen out of his own pocket and stabbed one of the suspects in the leg causing the attacker to drop the gun.

Waggoner picked up the pistol and fired at the fleeing suspects who appeared to be in their late teens. Waggoner, who wasn't robbed, told cops he thought the shooting was a gang hit. One of the men told the shooter to slay Waggoner “if you want to be all the way in the club,” Talking to newsmen Waggoner said: I've been hit in the chest feels like I've been hit with a sledgehammer.”

But Waggoner will likely to survive after a copy of The Message, a contemporary version of the New Testament, stopped two shots.

The Message, which according to its Amazon page has sold eight million copies, is described as a version of the New Testament in “contemporary language.”

The fact the book saved Waggoner's life proves “God's on Rick's side,” his friend of 20 years, Lillie Brown said.

“Rick is a great guy, you couldn't ask for anybody better than Rick. He's a great friend and terrific dad,” she said. Cops have yet to make any arrests.Reached at his home in Lakeside,Mont., Eugene H. Peterson, author of The Message said that he was thrilled to know his book stopped bullets. "That’s wonderful," said Peterson, who is 81.

Ten-foot python eats crocodile after lengthy battle

It was a right royal battle between two very dangerous reptiles. One a 10-foot long python and the other a crocodile. The battle took place at Lake Moondarra, near Mount Isa, Northern Queensland, Australia.

Tiffany Corlis, a local author, saw the fight and took these pictures, which have been widely used in the Australian media. Describing the furious encounter as an amazing battle she also said: “We saw the snake fighting with the crocodile - it would roll the crocodile around to get a better grip, and coil its body around the crocodile's legs to hold it tight.”

“The fight began in the water - the crocodile was trying to hold its head out of the water at one time, and the snake was constricting it.”

“After the crocodile had died, the snake uncoiled itself, came around to the front, and started to eat the crocodile, face-first,” she said. Ms Corlis said it appeared to take the snake around 15 minutes to eat the crocodile.

The snake was “definitely very full,” when it finished, she said. “I don't know where it went after that - we all left, thinking we didn't want to stick around!”

Another witness, Alyce Rosenthal, told local media that the two creatures fought for about five hours. By the end, they appeared exhausted, she said.

“It's not something that you see every day,” she said.

Pythons kill their prey by tightening their coils around the animal as it breathes out. This can cause the animal to suffocate or suffer heart failure, allowing the python to swallow its prey whole. Many snakes have flexible jaws that enable them to swallow prey many times their own body size.

The Australian state of Queensland is home to some of the world's most dangerous snakes, as well as saltwater crocodiles.

Water pythons in this area usually eat smaller animals - rats are their favourite.

Crocodiles represent a more unusual and riskier choice but with greater returns - it will be two months before the snake requires another meal. “They can swallow a crocodile, no problem, but it can defend itself, so it's a more risky choice than a rat,” says snake expert Bryan Fry, a professor at the University of Queensland. There are other risks too, he says. Witnesses said it took this snake about five hours to swallow the crocodile. During that time the snake is vulnerable to attack from a dingo.

As a python wraps itself around its prey, it's not squeezing the air out of it but waiting for it to exhale and then tightening the coil, gradually restricting its breath. Once the animal is in a python's stomach, its digestive system – which shuts down in between meals - suddenly kicks into hyperdrive.

This involves a sharp increase in their metabolic rate, their organs enlarging by three or four times their normal size and the release of enzymes to break down the food.