NEWS OF THE WEIRD

INEXPLICABLE Odessa, Texas, resident Ernesto Baeza Acosta, 34, has legally changed his name to Ernesto Trump and declared himself the son of President Trump. His NSFW Facebook page features photographs of Ernesto wearing a Trump-like wig and asks viewers to "Please share this so that my Dad your president can see this and spend time with me." Ernesto is a fan of President Trump, but his immigrant mother is unamused about his name change.

BRIGHT IDEAS Alana Nicole Donahue, 27, of Springfifield, Oregon, just wanted to entertain her children and nephew with a joyride around the neighborhood. But on July 12, as she pulled the kids (ages 2, 4 and 8) behind her Ford Taurus in a plastic red wagon, she was arrested for reckless endangerment. Donahue told police she was just "showing the kids a good time." However, horrifified witnesses saw the car going about 30 mph as the wagon went up on two wheels going around a busy traffific circle at rush hour.

UNCLEAR ON THE CONCEPT David Blackmon identifified himself as a drug dealer when he called the Okaloosa (Florida) County Sheriff's Offifice on July 16 to report that $50 in cash and a quarter-ounce of cocaine had been stolen from his car. When offificers investigated, they found a baggie with "suspected cocaine," a crack pipe and a crack rock in the car. Blackmon was charged with possession of cocaine and drug paraphernalia.

COMPELLING EXPLANATIONS Everett Lee Compton Jr., 49, told Siloam Springs, Arkansas, police that marijuana "makes him do sick things" after they apprehended him for abusing female donkeys. The donkeys' owners, Emert and Joyce Whitaker, had set up a surveillance camera and recorded Compton on three occasions putting a bag over a donkey's head and placing his pelvis against its rear end. "It just made me sick to my stomach," said Joyce Whitaker. "To know that she couldn't tell nobody and that she was having to go through this."

LEAST COMPETENT CRIMINALS Police in Wayne County, North Carolina, are looking for a careless cat burglar who keeps waking people up as he robs them. At least one victim awakened by the slender white man in early July has seen him wearing a pink polka-dot beach towel around his head. Police aren't sure if he's actually gotten away with any loot. Three heads are apparently not better than one, as three China Grove, North Carolina, masterminds demonstrated on July 12. Rex Allen Farmer, his son, Rex Carlo Farmer, and the younger man's girlfriend, Kayla Nicole Price, cooked up a scheme to rob the Mooresville gas station where the elder Farmer worked. Surveillance video showed Carlo, disguised in a woman's dress and wig, emptying the cash register as his father, the clerk on duty, stood by. Carlo then ran outside and removed the dress and wig, setting them on fifire next to the building. However, the fifire spread to a meter on the building and a privacy fence, thus summoning authorities. Police soon caught up to all three and arrested them.

THE ANIMAL KINGDOM An African grey parrot named Bud may have been the key witness in convicting 49-yearold Glenna Duram of White Cloud, Michigan, in the shooting death of her husband, Martin Duram, 46. The investigation of the 2015 shooting dragged on for a year before Martin's fifirst wife, who inherited the parrot, shared with a local TV station a videotape of Bud imitating two people having an argument, including the words "Don't (expletive) shoot." Three weeks later, Glenna Duram was arrested and charged with fifirst-degree murder, and on July 19, she was found guilty. Fire department dispatchers in Branson, Missouri, must have thought they were being punked on July 22, when they received a call to rescue a bird from a tree. But it was no joke. A ladder truck was dispatched to rescue a parrot that had escaped and became tangled in its leash 50 feet up in a tree. (Bonus: The fifirefifighter who braved the 50-foot climb was Colt Boldman.) ANGER MANAGEMENT Two AT&T utility workers apparently didn't work fast enough on lines outside the home of Jorge Jove, 64, of Hialeah, Florida, on July 19. After confronting the workers, Jove went back into his house, came out carrying a gun and began shooting at the trucks, deflflating the tires. Jove reloaded twice and shot at the trucks' engines before aiming at Gilberto Ramos, a service worker who was up on a utility pole. Jove was charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. Read more weird news at WeirdUniverse.net;

to rescue a bird from a tree. But it was no joke. A ladder truck was dispatched to rescue a parrot that had escaped and became tangled in its leash 50 feet up in a tree. (Bonus: The fifirefifighter who braved the 50-foot climb was Colt Boldman.) ANGER MANAGEMENT Two AT&T utility workers apparently didn't work fast enough on lines outside the home of Jorge Jove, 64, of Hialeah, Florida, on July 19. After confronting the workers, Jove went back into his house, came out carrying a gun and began shooting at the trucks, deflflating the tires. Jove reloaded twice and shot at the trucks' engines before aiming at Gilberto Ramos, a service worker who was up on a utility pole. Jove was charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.