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Slippery rock Gazette
Steal This Box
IN2018, during the holiday season, former NASA engi- neer Mark Rober of Santa Clarita, California, created a glitter bomb exploding package in response to having a package stolen from his
front porch.
In 2019, Rober invented a new
and improved version: When it is touched, the box explodes in glitter and emits an unpleasant odor along with a soundtrack of police chatter. As a coup de grace, it also takes a video of the thief and uploads it to the Cloud.
Interestingly, one of the sponsors for Rober’s project is Home Alone actor Macaulay Culkin.
Rober calls it a labor of love: “I have literally spent the last 10 months designing, building and testing a new and improved design for this season,” he said.
Well played, Mr. Rober.
Porch thieves: meet your NEMESIS.
Auld Lang Possum
Animal Help Now, a group that assists in “animal emergen- cies,” has gathered almost 160,000 signatures on a petition to repeal leg- islation allowing “Possum Drops” in North Carolina.
In a number of communities in the state, the custom of putting an opossum in a transparent box, sus- pending it in the air and then slowly lowering it to the ground is a feature of New Year’s Eve celebrations.
Organizers in Brasstown told the Raleigh News & Observer they ended its Possum Drop after the 2018 event because it’s “a hard job to do, and it’s time to move on,” but they maintained that the tradition does “absolutely nothing to harm” the animal.
Animal Help Now, however, is continuing its campaign against the state statute that makes it legal for people to treat opossums how- ever they wish between the dates of December 29 and January 2.
February 2020|25
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