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Sept. 9 (UPI) -- Police were summoned to an Ohio home early Friday morning when residents made an unusual discovery in their bathroom -- a coyote.

The Trenton Police Department said in a Facebook post officers responded about 5:18 a.m. Friday when a family reported a coyote was in their first floor bathroom.

The family told police the coyote must have entered the home about an hour earlier when the front door was left open so they could load up a vehicle for a road trip.

The post included a photo of the coyote hiding behind the toilet.

"The animal was also present in the small restroom during its use by the family that morning unbeknownst to them," the post said.

Police said the coyote was safely removed from the home and released unharmed.

(MSN) Don't take SpaceX seriously? If so, former SpaceX-antagonist and current NASA chief Bill Nelson, who seems to have completely forgotten about his own previously-held beliefs regarding the spaceflight company, has some words for you.

"When there was the beginning of the space cargo and crew programs, the two serious bidders were SpaceX and Boeing, and everybody poo-pooed SpaceX and said, 'Oh, Boeing is a legacy company,'" he said in a new interview with Newsweek. "Well, guess who is about to make its sixth flight after its first test flight with astronauts, and guess who's still on the ground?"

A fair burn to Boeing, which has, in short, been absolutely eating SpaceX's dust for over a decade. But it was a bit of a self-burn as well, seeing as how, by many accounts, Nelson himself was one of those early SpaceX "poo-pooers."

This isn't the first time that the head NASA honcho has glossed over his history of SpaceX ambivalence. At his NASA nomination hearing back in 2021, Nelson argued that through a series of laws dating back to the mid-80s, he'd personally "laid the foundation for the emergence of the modern commercial space sector."

But according to former colleagues and, uh, US Senate minutes, Nelson hasn't always been such a big fan of the privatized space travel industry — or, for that matter, of mercurial SpaceX CEO Elon Musk.

Back in 2010, when Nelson was still a senator, he was an extremely vocal opponent — or poo-pooer, if you will — of a Senate push to fund Commercial Crew missions into the cosmos, as corroborated by allegations from former NASA second-in-command Lori Garver in her recently-published memoir. In that same memoir, Garver also claimed that Nelson once "screamed at me to 'get your boy Elon in line.'"

Nelson's save-face efforts aren't terribly surprising given SpaceX's prominent successes.

"I think the private space industry is extremely beneficial," Nelson told Newsweek. "Just look at what SpaceX has already accomplished."

Sept. 9 (UPI) -- Utility officials in Virginia said 10,000 customers, including at least two schools, were without power for over an hour when a squirrel came into contact with substation equipment.mad

Dominion Energy spokeswoman Bonita Billingsley Harris said in a Twitter post that the power outage began about 8:45 a.m. Wednesday when a squirrel entered a substation in Virginia Beach.

"The squirrel got between a circuit breaker and a transformer causing a power surge that made the transformer fail," Harris told WVEC-TV.

The surge caused about 10,000 customers to lose power. Kempsville High School and Fairfield Elementary School were among the customers without electricity.

Harris said power was restored to all customers just over an hour after the outage began.

(Today) Business and employment-oriented website LinkedIn is the place to go for job opportunities, internships and professional networking. For one man, however, the social media network is the perfect place for unexpected conversations.

On Monday, September 5, Alexander Cohen, a product manager at a large healthcare startup in Austin, Texas, posted a truly one-of-a-kind money-saving hack he claimed to attempt during a company trip.

"I'm traveling for work and instead of eating a fancy dinner out, I've decided to cook a cheaper meal in the hotel room," reads the post on LinkedIn, which has been liked more than 1,400 times. "Even though the hotel room didn't have a kitchen, I managed to use the coffee machine to cook chicken with butter and garlic."

Cohen continued to say in the post that although his company allows him to expense dinner while traveling, he wanted to save money because he knows "that every dollar counts on the P&L" (that means profit and loss account for those not familiar with accounting lingo.)

"It's the little things that get you promoted," he said.

Cohen completed his unique take on cost-cutting measures by adorning the post with the hashtags work, money, hotel, coffee, promotion and career advice. If you've ever used a coffee machine in your hotel room (to actually make a cup of coffee, that is) you personally may be wanting to add #Horrifying or #CallTheFBI to his suite of hashtags.

This turn of events led a few people on the LinkedIn post and around the Internet to squint their eyes and wonder if his post was serious or not, taking to the comments to let their concern be known.

"I take it they're not counting the sick time you'll need for giving yourself salmonella on a business trip?" said one commenter on LinkedIn.

"I assume you pre cleaned the chicken in the toilet bowl first," said another user on LinkedIn.

"This is satire, right? It has to be satire," said a LinkedIn user, to which another user replied that one could also do "chicken satay." People are so clever.

Cohen's post actually went viral on three separate social media platforms: first on LinkedIn, then again on Twitter, where the post received 82,500 likes and more than 5,440 retweets and finally Reddit, where the post garnered 6,200 up votes and hundreds of comments.

"I feel like I'm allowed to sue you for this," said one user on Twitter.

Another pair of users shared their own cost-cutting hacks with a wink.

"True Story — Happened with me: I was on a work trip once and got hungry at midnight after working 6 hours," said the user on Twitter. "I wanted to save some money for the company I worked for. So made fried eggs in my hotel room using my company laptop."

"I went through this too. I was traveling for work and decided to have a barbecue on the iron to save money for the company I work for," said another Twitter user along with a precarious iron griddle setup.

Cohen later commented on his own post asking if anyone knew "how to get the taste of chicken out of the pot" because someone reported him to hotel management and was "threatening to charge the company card" he had on file.

At this point many of the commenters realized that his post might have been in jest and helped to relax the mounting terror of the comment section by replying to the serious concerns of some folks.

"I am sure you are joking cause otherwise, what about the guests who will use that coffee machine after you?" said one concerned commenter on LinkedIn. "They have to drink a coffee with a chicken flavour. I think you are selfish for doing that, assuming you are saving. Also, not hygienic at all. It damages the hotel's assets too."

Another LinkedIn user responded to that comment by reciting the definition of the word satire to indicate the likelihood that the post is a joke, which caused the original commenter to reply, "Thanks, Eminem."

If you're wondering if Cohen was indeed serious or not, we went straight to the source to find out.

"I wasn't even traveling at the time," said Alexander Cohen to TODAY Food in a direct message on Twitter. "I was actually at the Austin FC game at the time and we were delayed because of rain so I figured I'd have some fun."

Taking a look at Cohen's presence on social media, his comedic takes on personal finance, the restaurant business, the job market and other professional subjects allows for a fair bit of LinkedIn crossover, which he said he takes advantage of.

"I love posting satirical stories to LinkedIn (almost as a hobby now) because no one expects jokes on a 'professional' social network," he said.

"When you lied on your resume and landed a remote job that required 10 years of experience but you have none," reads one of his other posts on Twitter.

In another tweet saying he doesn't understand how Chili's, Applebees, Olive Garden and Red Lobster "are still in business," his words are causing another bit of heated conversation and jokes. There's a theme to his social media output that stirs conversation, to be sure.

"I'd be lying if I said I wasn't enjoying how far this thing has spread," said Cohen, adding that he was surprised at how viral the post truly went. "I did not expect it to blow up across other platforms like it did," he said.

When asked what he would say to people who think LinkedIn is not for jokes but for serious and employment-minded professionals only, his reply to the rise-and-grind bros, networking divas and connection collectors is simple.

"Work is work," said Cohen. "Go outside and enjoy life."

Sept. 13 (UPI) -- Authorities in Pennsylvania are warning members of the public to be on the lookout for a 6-foot boa constrictor who escaped from his owner's home.

Police and animal rescuers in Mercer said the snake, named Steve Irwin, escaped from his owner's home through an open front door in the North Pitt Street area of Mercer.

"We just wanted to let everyone know this thing is out there, and if you see it, you probably shouldn't play with it," Paul Tobin of the Mercer County Humane Society told The Herald newspaper.

Tobin said the snake was recently fed and will likely not be on the hunt for food.

"But these snakes are opportunists," he said. "So if the opportunity arose, it would probably eat."

The boa's owner said in a Facebook post that a $200 reward is being offered for Steve's safe return.

Sept. 13 (UPI) -- A Missouri woman who won a $1 million prize from a scratch-off lottery ticket said her winning ticket nearly ended up in the trash.

The St. Louis County woman told Missouri Lottery officials she bought a $50 Millionaire Blowout scratch-off ticket from the 7-Eleven store on Lemay Ferry Road in St. Louis and didn't think it was a winner when she scratched it off.

She said the ticket remained in a pile of non-winning tickets in her car for two days before she decided to double-check the losing tickets using a gas station's lottery scanner.

"I stopped at the gas station to check my ticket, just to make sure I wasn't throwing away any winners," she said. "I scanned the ticket, and it said I won $1 million, visit the lottery office."

The player said she was stunned by the news.

"I couldn't believe this was real," she recalled.

The woman said she scanned the ticket multiple times to make sure.

"I thought maybe it was wrong, but it kept saying I was a winner," she said. "I won $1 million!"

The player did not reveal whether she has any immediate plans for her winnings.

Sept. 13 (UPI) -- Animal control officers in North Carolina captured a pig that had been seen wandering loose through a neighborhood for at least two days.

Residents of the Birchwood Hills neighborhood in Raleigh said the pig had been seen darting through yards and driveways since at least Saturday without any human supervision.

Raleigh Animal Control officers responded Monday when the pig was found hiding under a resident's deck and they ended up chasing the animal to another yard where it sought refuge under another deck.

The officers were eventually able to lure the pig out with food and took the animal to the Blind Spot Sanctuary.

The sanctuary said the pig's owner will have 10 days to come forward and claim their pet before it is put up for adoption.

City of San Antonio Animal Care Services in Texas faced a similar mystery last month when two pigs of unknown origins were rounded up after about a week of wandering loose through residential neighborhoods.

ABUJA, Nigeria (AP) — Nigerian officials have seized thousands of donkey penises that were about to be exported to Hong Kong, an official said on Thursday.

Sacks of the donkey male genitals were seized at the international airport in Lagos, Nigeria's largest city, Sambo Dangaladima, the Nigeria Customs Service area commander, told reporters.

The consignment was "falsely declared … as cow male genitals (but) after due examination, my export officers discovered they were donkey male genitals," said Dangaladima. A total of 16 sacks of the genitals were seized, he said.

An investigation has been launched to find out more information about the seized items, the customs service said.

Although the seizure of donkey genitals meant for export from Nigeria is rare, donkey skins are known to be frequently exported or smuggled out of the country. In July, the Nigerian customs seized $116,000 worth of donkey skins being smuggled into the country from neighboring Niger.

Nigeria is trying to curb the export of donkey skins which has drastically diminished the country's population of the work animals, particularly in the north. Nigerian senators in 2021 proposed to ban the killing of donkeys and the export of their skins.

(CNET) In the suburbs around Sydney, Australia, a battle between beast and bird is raging.

In one corner, Homo sapiens, an evolutionary success story with opposable thumbs and big brains that has taken over the world. In the other corner, Cacatua galerita -- or, the sulphur-crested cockatoo -- a yellow-mohawked parrot with a grueling screech. The two sides have spent the past few years locked in suburban warfare, striving to take control of the kingdom of garbage.

The wild "cockies," as they're known Down Under, have learned to open residents' bins with their beaks to gain access to the sweet, sweet food humans have discarded. That has made them particularly interesting for behavioral scientists.

The conniving flyers were the subject of a study in the journal Science in July 2021 led by Barbara Klump, a behavioral ecologist at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Germany. Klump and her collaborators showed the cockatoo youths were being armed with the capability to open bins and scrounge for food via "social learning." Basically, they were copying other cockatoos to forage for discarded toast and last week's takeout (that you ordered far too much of).

Now Klump and her collaborators are back with a new study, published in the journal Current Biology on Sept. 12, recording the unique interactions between the two sides of the garbage war. They note that, as the cockies have become more innovative when it comes to opening bins, residents have also been learning -- and teaching each other -- to protect their bins with ever more effective measures.

The team took an accounting of 3,283 bins across four suburbs where cockatoos opening bins had previously been recorded. In short, the team went around and studied bins, marking off whether the human owners had put protection in place. They write that levels varied between 0% and 50% across the suburbs.

Those using protection against cockatoos were assessed based on different levels ranging from no alteration to the bin (that is, placing a rubber snake on the lid) to a fixed alteration, like a weight. The team were able to show that cockies are not afraid of rubber snakes and happily open those bins. They also have been shown to knock off objects, like bricks, to crack open the garbage bin-safe. However, they're yet to crack the hardest levels of garbage bin contraptions, like "shoes in the hinge."

Intriguingly, the team studied how these protective measures were rolled out across different suburbs. They found protected bins were "geographically more assorted by protection status than expected if protection was randomly distributed." They also found that bins close to each other on a street were more likely to use similar protection methods than those close together but out of sight.

Basically, they were seeing a pattern of protection that suggested the human side of the garbage war was strategizing its defenses.

"People come up with new protection methods on their own, but a lot of people actually learn it from their neighbors or people on their street, so they get their inspiration from someone else," said Klump in a press release.

Previous surveys had suggested that about two-thirds of those surveyed (a pool of 172 people from 51 suburbs) had learned their protection method from a neighbor or people on their street.

Another subset of respondents also changed the level of their protection based on the cockies' behavior. The authors highlight a specific example where a human defender of garbage was using bricks on the lid of their garbage bin. The cockies, the respondent says, got too clever and so they started putting a stick through the hinge of their bin to prevent the flap from lifting all the way over. As you can see in the lead image, a cockatoo makes short work of a brick. But below, you can see one struggle with the stick.

A resident has placed a stick through the bin's hinge, preventing the flap from opening -- so the cockatoo gives up.

These high-level protective measures are yet to be thwarted by the klepto-cockatoos, but it might not stay that way forever. If a few of the winged warriors start to evade the human defenses, it's already been shown others will follow. And will that keep on driving innovation by both beast and bird? Potentially! But the research team writes that it needs to further understand the mechanisms underlying learning behaviors and identify whether the cockatoos can solve higher-level protective measures.

The study is ongoing, and citizen science has been key to revealing this innovation arms race. Without the aid of survey respondents across Australia, the trash thievery may never have been fully understood. Should you be in Sydney and find the cockatoos are prying open garbage bins in your area -- or even if you're somewhere else in Australia with sulphur-crested cockatoos and you're not seeing this behavior -- you should respond to the 2022 survey using this Google form.

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