A bird sighting on New York’s Long Island has avian enthusiasts flocking to the region in hopes of spotting a feathered friend that has never been seen before in the state.

The common cuckoo is typically found from Europe to Japan, with the majority of the population wintering in Africa. But one was recently spotted in Riverhead — a town on the north shore of Long Island about 75 miles (120 kilometers) from New York City — by a golfer who snapped a photo and sent it to his nephew, a birding enthusiast.

The information eventually was shared with the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in Ithaca, New York. Once the bird was confirmed as a common cuckoo, birders quickly shared the news in their communities.

The bird has since been spotted more than 200 times by enthusiasts who have noted their sightings on the birding site ebird.org and various social media sites, including the American Birding Association. Many people in other parts of the U.S. also have reported making special treks to the region in hopes of seeing it for themselves. The last confirmed sightings came late Sunday afternoon.

It’s not clear how or why the bird ended up in southern New York, or if it’s even still in the region. Experts say it’s a juvenile — meaning it hatched this spring or summer — so it’s reasonable to conclude it was trying to migrate for the winter but somehow got lost or blown off course.

The common cuckoo has been found only three other times in the eastern U.S. and Canada, experts said.

Jay McGowan, a curator at the Cornell Lab’s Macaulay Library, said Thursday that the bird may still be in the area, but if it has relocated, it may be unlikely anyone will happen across it again. He urged anyone who does see it to report their sightings to the birder community.

“This is definitely a major event for anyone birding in New York state, and unusual enough for the broader region,” McGowan said, adding that he’s not surprised to see many people are willing to make long trips to the area for a chance to see a bird they would otherwise be unlikely to see unless they went to Europe or Asia.

”If people see it, they shouldn’t approach too closely for photos, but otherwise it’s fairly tolerant of people and traffic,” McGowan said. “It looks a lot like a small hawk, like the common Cooper’s hawk, so don’t be fooled if you see one of those.”

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — A baby elephant at the Oregon Zoo had more tricks than treats to show when handlers gave it a small pumpkin to play with during an annual fall event where giant elephants smash half-ton pumpkins.

Weighing just 775 pounds (351.5 kilograms), eight-month-old Asian elephant Tula-Tu is about the heft of one of the giant pumpkins so is too small to smash them. Instead, zoo handlers gave her a small pumpkin to practice with. The little elephant dribbled the gourd around like a soccer ball, a video from the zoo shows.

Her elephant family at the Oregon Zoo enjoyed the large pumpkins on Oct. 16 at the annual “Squishing of the Squash,” a tradition that goes back to 1999 when a farmer donated a pumpkin weighing 828 pounds (376 kilograms). The donated pumpkins have gotten bigger, around 1,000 pounds (450 kilograms) this year, thanks to competitive hobbyists at the Pacific Giant Vegetable Growers Club.

To break open the gargantuan gourds, zookeepers present them to Tula-Tu’s adult relatives like her brother and father who weigh slightly over 10,000 pounds (4,500 kilograms). In a video from the zoo, they appear to delicately place one foot at the top, and gently press down. The pumpkins crack with a loud pop, sending rind and seeds flying.

Past years’ videos have shown midsized, young elephants putting both feet on top of the pumpkins but being too light — or lacking technique — so the giant vegetables don’t burst.

This year the adults elephants smashed the massive pumpkins in front of a cheering crowd of zoo visitors, and then the family of elephants ate the many tons of squash fragments.

Asian elephants like Tula-Tu and her family are considered highly endangered, according to Oregon Zoo officials. There is a fragmented population of around 40,000 to 50,000 such elephants in the wild in places ranging from India to Borneo, a Southeast Asian island straddling Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei. But there have been successful conservation milestones in recent years, including in Cambodia.

LANSING, Mich. (AP) — Dogs dressed up as everything from Elvis Presley to Scooby Doo’s Mystery Machine went trick-or-treating in Michigan’s capital Friday as part of the annual Howloween event organized by a local pet store.

The costumed canines made a loop through Lansing’s Old Town arts district, stopping outside restaurants, gift shops and jewelry stores, where owners were waiting to provide treats and a scratch behind the ears.

Wendy Beck’s pooch, Bella, “got filled up on biscuits” and had to stop along the route for a power nap. It was the 9-year-old St. Bernard’s first Holloween, but Alicia Town’s dog, Mojo, is a veteran in more ways than one.

The 13-year-old Pomeranian was a tank driver, rolling around in a little green tank – an ode to Town’s husband serving in the Army.

“There are so many dogs and so many people. You see the cutest things,” Town said. “People go above and beyond on their costumes, and you get everything. It’s amazing.”

Makenzie Smith-Emrich accompanied her pitbull, Sadie, who was dressed up as a kissing booth pumpkin.

“This is something we wait for all year, because it’s something that we can do with our dogs that they absolutely adore,” the Lansing resident said. “And they get to dress up, and people give them attention.”

The event is organized each year by Preuss Pets, an Old Town fixture. The number of dogs is capped at 200, and their owners have to pre-register. It is all part of an effort to keep the numbers down for safety’s sake.

Kirbay Preuss said Howloween is “joyous” and “a very good thing.”

“I think right now with everything going on in the world we need more joyous events, and that’s what this is,” she said.

Ah, rats!

Researchers think they have debunked the origin of Chicago’s so-called “rat hole,” one of the Windy City’s weirdest local landmarks.

Hold on, now. The rat hole wasn’t what it you think. It wasn’t some back alley bar that served as a speakeasy for the city’s notorious gangster clientele or a tenement stuffed to the brim with junk. It was actually a full-body impression of an unlucky critter that got trapped in wet sidewalk cement in the city’s Roscoe Village neighborhood about 20 or 30 years ago. The imprint closely resembles that of a spread-eagled rat, complete with outlines of what appear to be tiny claws, arms and legs and even a tail.

The rat hole went viral early last year after comedian Winslow Dumaine posted a photo of it on X. The post drew curious tourists to the site at all hours, with some leaving coins and other odd objects around the impression as a tribute.

The constant traffic drew complaints from neighbors, though, and in April 2024 someone filled the impression with a substance resembling plaster. City workers eventually removed that slab of sidewalk and took it to the City Hall-County Building. A plaque honoring the rat hole remains at the actual site.

Researchers hailing from the University of Tennessee, New York Institute of Technology College of Osteopathic Medicine and the University of Calgary published a paper Wednesday in the journal Biology Letters that concludes the rat hole was most likely created not by the titular rodent but a squirrel or a muskrat.

The researchers studied online photos of the rat hole and compared measurements of the imprint to museum specimens of animals commonly found in the Chicago area. The presence of arms, legs and a tail excluded birds, snakes, frogs and turtles, shrinking the possibilities to a mammal. The claw outlines further reduced the field to rats, mice, squirrels, chipmunks and muskrats, the study said.

The creature’s long forelimbs, third digits and hind paws were too large for a rat but fell into the measurement ranges for Eastern gray squirrels, fox squirrel sand muskrats. The most probable suspect is the Eastern gray squirrel given how abundant that creature is in the Chicago area, the study states, noting that other researchers have theorized that a squirrel created the imprint, pointing out that cement is typically wet during the day and rats are nocturnal; the creature didn’t leave any tracks, suggesting a squirrel misjudged a leap or slipped from a branch and landed in the wet cement.

The researchers acknowledged that the imprint did not feature a bushy tail. But they noted that hair often lacks the rigidity to create deep, well-defined impressions and it would have been surprising to find such an imprint.

“We therefore propose that the specimen be rechristened the ‘Windy City Sidewalk Squirrel’ — a name more fitting of its likely origins and more aligned with the evidence at hand,” they wrote.

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Protesters rallying against the Trump administration in Portland put the city’s quirky and irreverent reputation on display Sunday by pedaling through the streets wearing absolutely nothing — or close to it — in an “emergency” edition of the annual World Naked Bike Ride.

Crowds that have gathered daily and nightly outside the immigration facility in Oregon’s largest city in recent days have embraced the absurd, donning inflatable frog, unicorn, axolotl and banana costumes as they face off with federal law enforcement who often deploy tear gas and pepper balls.

The bike ride is an annual tradition that usually happens in the summer, but organizers of this weekend’s hastily called event said another nude ride was necessary to speak out against President Donald Trump’s attempts to mobilize the National Guard to quell protests.

Rider Janene King called the nude ride a “quintessentially Portland way to protest.”

The 51-year-old was naked except for wool socks, a wig and a hat. She sipped hot tea and said she was unbothered by the steady rain and temperatures in the mid-50s (about 12 Celsius).

“We definitely do not want troops coming into our city,” King said.

Bike riders made their way through the streets and to the city’s U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement building. Authorities there ordered people to stay out of the street and protest only on sidewalks or risk being arrested.

The city is awaiting the ruling of an appeals court panel on whether Trump can send out the federalized troops after a federal judge on Oct. 5 ordered a temporary hold on deployment.

“Joy is a form of protest. Being together with mutual respect and kindness is a form of protest,” the ride’s organizers said on Instagram. “It’s your choice how much or little you wear.”

Fewer people were fully naked than usual — likely because of the cool, wet weather — but some still bared it all and rode wearing only bike helmets.

Naked bike rides have thronged the streets of Oregon’s largest city every year since 2004, often holding up traffic as the crowd cycles through with speakers playing music. Some years have drawn roughly 10,000 riders, according to Portland World Naked Bike Ride.

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Weber reported from Los Angeles.

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A New Orleans family cleaning up their overgrown backyard made an extremely unusual find: Under the weeds was a mysterious marble tablet with Latin characters that included the phrase “spirits of the dead.”

“The fact that it was in Latin that really just gave us pause, right?” said Daniella Santoro, a Tulane University anthropologist. “I mean, you see something like that and you say, ‘Okay, this is not an ordinary thing.’”

Intrigued and slightly alarmed, Santoro reached out to her classical archaeologist colleague Susann Lusnia, who quickly realized that the slab was the 1,900-year-old grave marker of a Roman sailor named Sextus Congenius Verus.

“When I first saw the image that Daniella sent me, it really did send a shiver up my spine because I was just floored,” Lusnia said.

Further sleuthing by Lusnia revealed the tablet had been missing from an Italian museum for decades.

Sextus Congenius Verus had died at age 42, of unknown causes, after serving for more than two decades in the imperial navy on a ship named for the Roman god of medicine, Asclepius. The gravestone calls the sailor “well deserving” and was commissioned by two people described as his “heirs,” who were likely shipmates since Roman military could not be married at the time, Lusnia said.

The tablet had been in an ancient cemetery of around 20 graves of military personnel, found in the 1860s in Civitavecchia, a seaside in northwest Italy about 30 miles (48 kilometers) from Rome. Its text had been recorded in 1910 and included in a catalog of Latin inscriptions, which noted the tablet’s whereabouts were unknown.

The tablet was later documented at the National Archeological Museum in Civitavecchia prior to World War II. But the museum had been “pretty much destroyed” during Allied bombing and took several decades to rebuild, Lusnia said. Museum staff confirmed to Lusnia the tablet had been missing for decades. Its recorded measurements — 1 square foot (0.09 square meters) and 1 inch (2.5 centimeters) thick — matched the size of the tablet found in Santoro’s backyard.

“You can’t have better DNA than that,” Lusnia said.

She said the FBI is in talks with Italian authorities to repatriate the tablet. An FBI spokesperson said the agency could not respond to requests for comment during the government shutdown.

A final twist to the story suggests how the tablet made its way to New Orleans.

As media reports of the find began circulating this week, Erin Scott O’Brien says her ex-husband called her and told her to watch the news. She immediately recognized the hunk of marble, which she had always seen as a “cool-ass piece of art.” They had used as a garden decoration and then forgot about it before selling the home to Santoro in 2018.

“None of us knew what it was,” O’Brien said. “We were watching the video, just like in shock.”

O’Brien said she received the tablet from her grandparents — an Italian woman and a New Orleans native who was stationed in the country during World War II.

Perhaps no one would be more thrilled by the tablet’s rediscovery than Sextus himself. Grave markers were important in Roman culture to uphold legacies, even of everyday citizens, Lusnia said.

“Now Sextus Congenius Verus is being talked about so much,” Lusnia said. “If there’s an afterlife and he’s in it and he knows, he’s very happy because this is what a Roman wants — to be remembered forever.”

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Brook is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — In the contest for best scrapple sculpture in Philadelphia on Friday it was the “Mush Push” fashioned from the regionally popular pork breakfast meat that got Patrick Moser’s entry over the goal line.

The Norristown tattoo artist’s tribute to the Philadelphia Eagles’ trademark short yardage play, known as the “tush push,” took the top honor at a lighthearted art competition to kick off the Scrapple & Apple Festival.

The celebration of all things scrapple at Reading Terminal Market began with the contest to fashion art from 5 pounds (2.25 kilograms) of scrapple.

Moser and 11 other volunteer contestants were given sculpting tools and 90 minutes to come up with their best scrapple creations. The “expert judge” was Sasha Suda, chief executive of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Moser described his work as “Caravaggio meets Siriani” — Nick Siriani is the Eagles’ head coach, and Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio was a Baroque painter in Italy during the 14th and 15th centuries. The tush push, also sometimes called the “brotherly shove,” is a play by the reigning NFL champions that other teams have been unable to counter.

As for scrapple? Although it’s sometimes the butt of jokes, it’s a food that’s popular among the German families who settled in eastern Pennsylvania in the colonial period. When made properly it’s a porcine delicacy and commonly available at diners and on farmhouse tables across the state.

It takes hours to properly cook, according to Marlin Dietrich, owner of Dietrich’s Meats & Country Store in Krumsville, Pennsylvania. He sells about 300 pounds (135 kilograms) of it per week.

Dietrich boils down beef and pork bones and seasons it all with salt, pepper and coriander. His scrapple is thickened with buckwheat flour and roasted cornmeal. Dietrich fries it to a crisp exterior and enjoys it with another Pennsylvania Dutch staple, apple butter.

“I like it once or twice a week for breakfast,” Dietrich said. “Making a sculpture? That’s a shame.”

Moser’s lumps of indistinguishable football players won him a trophy and a $100 gift card. The public is also getting a chance to weigh in on Saturday, when the artworks were to be on display at the market. Last year’s scrapple sculpting contest winner was a cookie jar decorated with a rooster and an egg inside.

If a football themed sculpture isn’t enough scrapple, the festival also features such culinary offerings such as scrapple fries, an andouille scrapple breakfast sandwich, scrapple apple cookies and scrapple quiche. There’s even a scrapple cheesesteak.

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Scolforo reported from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

INDEPENDENCE, Mo. (AP) — Century-old wreaths made from human hair fill the walls of Leila’s Hair Museum, and glass cases overflow with necklaces and watch bands woven from the locks of the dead. There also are tresses purported to come from past presidents, Hollywood legend Marilyn Monroe and even Jesus.

For about 30 years, this hair art collection in the Kansas City suburb of Independence attracted an eclectic group of gawkers that included the likes of heavy metal legend Ozzy Osbourne.

But the museum’s namesake, Leila Cohoon, died last November at the age of 92. Now her granddaughter, Lindsay Evans, is busy rehoming the collection of more than 3,000 pieces to museums across the country, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C.

“Every time I come here, I feel her here,” Evans said Monday while touring with representatives of the National Museum of Funeral History in Houston who left with around 30 pieces. “This place is her. And so I feel like this process of rehoming her collection has helped me grieve her in a way that I didn’t even realize I really needed.”

It all started in 1956 when Cohoon, a hair dresser, was shopping for Easter shoes. Inside an antique store she found a gold frame filled with strands of hair twisted into the shape of flowers.

“She said forget the Easter shoes,” Evans said. “My granddad always said that this was the most expensive piece of the museum because look at what it started.”

Evans is keeping that one for herself.

This form of art peaked in popularity in the mid-1800s as women coiled the hair of the dead into jewelry or told their family history by intertwining the curls of loved ones into wreaths.

But hair art had fallen out of favor by the 1940s, as memories were captured in photos, Evans said. Additionally, “this artwork was not celebrated because it was mostly done by women. And so in larger museums, they don’t have a lot of this.”

Her grandmother saved some from being trashed, wrote a book and taught classes on the art form, training a new generation of artists.

Often the hair art was housed in elaborate frames with original glass, so when her grandmother started haggling with antique dealers for the frames, they frequently offered to get rid of the hair.

“And she’d say, ‘No, no, keep that in there,’” Evans said.

Then her grandmother would hand them her business card and tell them to be on the lookout. Soon dealers across the country were calling.

“If it had hair, she got it,” said Evans, who sometimes accompanied her grandmother as she hunted for new additions.

The collection grew to include a wreath containing hair from every woman in the League of Women Voters from Vermont in 1865. A pair of crescent-shaped wreaths contain the tresses of two sisters whose heads were shaved when they entered a convent. A couple pieces even feature taxidermy.

The frames filled the walls of her home and the beauty school she ran with her husband. She shoved them under beds and in closets. Eventually, the couple snatched up this building — a former car dealership — nestled between a fast-food restaurant and car wash.

Celebrities caught wind of the attraction. Actress and comedian Phyllis Diller donated a hair wreath that had been in her family for generations. TV personality Mike Rowe filmed an episode of “Somebody’s Gotta Do It” here. There might also be a few strands from Osbourne inside. When he came to visit, Cohoon snipped a lock, although Evans has yet to find it.

Evans said her grandmother was tight-lipped on what she spent over the years, but she anticipates the worth of the art may top $1 million.

As Genevieve Keeney, the head of the National Museum of Funeral History in Houston, waded through the collection, she eagerly eyed the jewelry that memorialized the dead, including a small pin containing the locks of a 7-year-old girl who died in 1811.

“I always felt it was important to educate people about death,” said Keeney, also a licensed mortician. “Our society does such an injustice on getting people to understand what the true emotions are going to feel like when death happens.”

Evans herself is struggling with a mix of emotions as she slowly rehomes her grandmother’s legacy.

“I want people to see all of this because that’s what she wanted,” Evans said. “But when this is empty it’ll break my heart a little bit.”

DESTIN, Fla. (AP) — A dog named Eeyore turned into a rescuer, leading a Florida sheriff’s deputy to where a missing 86-year-old woman had fallen while walking him, bodycam footage shows.

The woman’s husband reported her missing on the night of Sept. 25 after she didn’t return from her walk.

“She just takes that dog, but she never takes more than 10 or 15 minutes,” the worried husband told an Okaloosa County sheriff’s deputy, according to the footage released Monday. “It’s almost an hour now. It’s over an hour now.”

The responding deputy drove around the neighborhood until she spotted Eeyore in the middle of the road. The dog trotted up to the deputy, who responded: “Hi! Where’s your mommy?”

The dog then led her to the nearby spot where the woman had fallen.

The woman, who was alert and later taken to a medical facility, was astonished that Eeyore had guided the deputy to her, noting that it wasn’t even her dog.

“He came up to your car?” the woman asked the deputy. “Oh, sweetheart. … Oh Eeyore, you’re such a good boy. Grandma loves you.”

Francine the calico cat is back home at a Lowe’s store in Virginia after going missing for a few weeks, hitching a ride on a truck that turned up at a sister facility in another state.

Two employees from a Lowe’s in Richmond made the 90-minute drive early Monday to pick up Francine, who disappeared in September and recently was discovered at the company’s distribution center in Garysburg, North Carolina.

She was back on the job Tuesday, playing with customers, posing for photos and soaking in affection.

“Francine is one of us,” store supervisor Wayne Schneider said in a telephone interview. “She’s just amazing. What she means here to the store and the employees, you really can’t imagine the outpouring that the employees and also the customers give her daily.”

Francine spends much of her time either at the customer service desk or in the store’s seasonal area. But things went awry in September as the store brought in items for the upcoming Christmas season. Store general manager Mike Sida said that disruption may have prompted Francine to seek comfort elsewhere.

After store employees hadn’t seen Francine for a few days, they reviewed past surveillance video. There were glimpses of her in the appliance section and then the receiving department, where she darted into a truck. An overnight manager is then seen shutting the truck’s door and off it went to Garysburg, about 85 miles (137 kilometers) to the south.

“And then, of course, when she got down to the distribution center, she shot off the truck,” Sida said. “That’s when we found out where she was and she was missing.”

An animal control office set up humane traps at the distribution center, where photos of Francine were posted throughout. The center had dozens of monitoring cameras, and Lowe’s brought in thermal drones to survey the area. An Instagram account unaffiliated with Lowe’s dedicated to finding Francine grew to more than 34,000 followers.

On Saturday, Francine was spotted on camera near the distribution center. After more humane traps were installed, a volunteer checked each trap throughout the night. Finally, one of the traps triggered and Francine’s meows could be heard.

Schneider and Sida got in a car early Monday and drove to get Francine.

“That ride going down, knowing that we were going to get her, was just heartwarming. Knowing she’s safe and that she’s coming back to the store to get off her two-week vacation,” Schneider said.

Francine was a stray when she started living at the Lowe’s store more than eight years ago. Cats are common sightings around feed stores and garden centers, which contain large amounts of grain and seed that can be attractive to mice and rats. In New York City, cats are beloved fixtures of the city’s bodegas and delis.

At the Lowe’s store, Francine “just showed up,” Sida said. “We had a bit of a mice problem. So, of course, I’m like, wow. I like this cat a lot because it’s helping me.”

Lowe’s doesn’t have an official policy about cats in stores. Asked why Francine wasn’t taken to someone’s residence after showing up, Sida said she is loved by employees and the community.

“Francine picked us. We didn’t pick her,” Sida said. “Later, we would embrace her being our store cat. But at the end of the day, she came to us. Where she’s at is where she wants to be. She does whatever she wants.”

Unlike Lowe’s employees, Francine does not wear a vest. She had been previously outfitted with several collars but escaped them all. Now they plan on fitting her with a harness that includes identifying information.

A local brewery will host a “Francine Fest” community event on Wednesday to celebrate the homecoming, while the store is planning its own team party.

ORO VALLEY, Ariz. (AP) — A bear surprised shoppers at a southern Arizona grocery store when it walked through the front door and ran around inside for a few minutes before exiting the building.

Over the weekend, the bear was seen in the neighborhood near the Fry’s location and was spotted again Monday behind the store before entering it.

Right before entering the store, the animal bumped up against the automatic doors and managed to eventually walk in, said Darren Wright, a spokesperson for the Oro Valley Police Department.

“It just ran around,” Wright said. “I don’t think it did any damage.”

A video taken by a shopper showed a man looking for the bear inside the store. After peering down at his phone, the man looked up to find the bear within several feet of him. The bear ran away from the man.

The animal was seen at some point in the store’s produce section but isn’t believed to have taken anything. An officer who was nearby arrived at the store and worked to get people out of the building. Authorities lost track of the bear after it left the store.

“We have had several bear sightings in Oro Valley,” Wright said. “We occasionally get them coming out of the desert. But this is the most interesting interaction we have had with one.”

JAY, Vt. (AP) — Months before the first snow beckons skiers, sheep and goats are hitting the slopes in Vermont.

Dozens of animals have been mowing down overgrown vegetation at Jay Peak near the Canadian border. They’re expected to clear 25 acres (10 hectares) over a five-week stint, an experiment officials say is worth a try on part of the 300 acres (120 hectares) that need to be mowed. The goal is to gradually reduce the reliance on gas-powered mechanical mowers.

“This year has proven that it can be done and be done successfully,” said Andy Stenger, director of mountain and base area operations. “They’re great employees. They take a lot of lunch breaks, but that’s kind of the idea.”

The animals wear special collars that emit a noise if they get too close to an invisible fence and deliver a mild shock if they cross the barrier. The collars also send data to the herd’s owner, Adam Ricci of Cloud Brook Grazing.

“I can see where they’re spending most of their time. And I also get a heads up if there’s sick animals. I’ll see a drop in activity and then it’ll give me a notification,” he said.

Using livestock for landscaping isn’t new. More than 25 years ago, a New Hampshire electric company used 1,000 sheep to clear vegetation under power lines. In 2010, the University of Georgia brought in goats to control an invasive plant overtaking a section of campus. And the Nashville Chew Crew, a herd of sheep, has been working for the city’s parks department since 2017. New York City has also used goats to clear parts of its parks.

Ricci said his goats and sheep spent a busy summer cleaning up backyards, reclaiming abandoned farmland, gobbling up poison ivy and removing invasive species from the grounds of a retirement community.

“Ideally, we can scale this up to the point where it’s working well and then hopefully develop a model that can be used at other ski resorts as well,” he said. “But there’s still a lot to learn here.”

Further south, Magic Mountain ski area used a herd from Slippery Slope Goats last year to do its mowing. In both cases, the collaboration was facilitated by the Agritech Institute for Small Farms, an organization working to increase access to advanced technology that can help small farms stay in business while mitigating climate change.

Goatscaping reduces the carbon footprint of vegetation control, reduces erosion and increases a site’s capacity to hold water, Ricci said. The cost per acre is similar to mechanical mowing, though he acknowledges the animals are slow.

“Conventional methods, they’re covering this whole entire site in about 10 days,” he said. “So these guys work significantly slower than weed whackers do.”

But employees and visitors at Jay Peak have enjoyed the friendly herd, Stenger said.

“It’s a lot of fun to have them on the mountain,” he said.

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Ramer reported from Concord, New Hampshire.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Police in Northern California were understandably perplexed when they pulled over a Waymo taxi after it made an illegal U-turn, only to find no driver behind the wheel and therefore, no one to ticket.

The San Bruno Police Department wrote in now viral weekend social media posts that officers were conducting a DUI operation early Saturday morning when a self-driving Waymo made the illegal turn in front of them.

Officers stopped the vehicle, but declined to write a ticket as their “citation books don’t have a box for ‘robot’.”

“That’s right … no driver, no hands, no clue,” read the post, which was accompanied by photos of an officer peering into the car.

Officers contacted Waymo to report what they called a “glitch,” and in the post, they said they hope reprogramming will deter more illegal moves.

The department’s Facebook post has generated more than 500 comments, with many people outraged that police didn’t ticket the company. People also wanted to know how police got the car to pull over.

But San Bruno Sgt. Scott Smithmatungol said they can only ticket a human driver or operator for a moving violation, unlike parking tickets that can be left with the vehicle.

A new state law that kicks in next year will allow police to report moving violations to the Department of Motor Vehicles, which is figuring out the specifics, including potential penalties, the Los Angeles Times reports.

Waymo spokesperson Julia Ilina told the LA Times that the company’s autonomous driving system is closely monitored by regulators. “We are looking into this situation and are committed to improving road safety through our ongoing learnings and experience,” Ilina said.

Waymos currently operate in Phoenix, Los Angeles and San Francisco and in areas south of the city, including the suburb of San Bruno.

“It blew up a lot bigger than we thought,” Smithmatungol said of the viral post to The Associated Press on Tuesday. “We’re not a large agency like San Francisco.”

San Bruno has about 40,000 residents and a sworn police force of 50 officers, he said.

Waymo is owned by Google’s parent company, Alphabet.

A veterinarian who refused to return a dog to a homeless man after finding the ailing pit bull mix tied to a truck was convicted of theft Friday in western Michigan.

Amanda Hergenreder took the dog on a two-hour drive to her clinic, where she cleared up a severe urinary tract infection and removed a rotten tooth last November. She named him Biggby, after a nearby coffee shop, and said the 16-year-old dog was thriving while living with her.

But prosecutors filed a misdemeanor larceny charge after Hergenreder refused to bring the dog back to Chris Hamilton, a Grand Rapids man who lacked a permanent home at the time. She cited her ethical duties as a veterinarian and noted that the dog wasn’t licensed.

Despite the controversy, Hergenreder told jurors that she would do it all again “in a heartbeat.”

Defense attorney Miles Greengard said the veterinarian kept the dog because there was no assurance that animal welfare authorities would investigate his living conditions.

The trial in Grand Rapids, 150 miles (241 kilometers) west of Detroit, lasted two days. A conviction for larceny can carry up to 93 days of jail and a fine.

“She believed, as I believe, she did the right thing. What is right and what is legal are not always the same thing,” Greengard told The Associated Press.

Hamilton won’t be getting the dog back. Biggby — or Vinny as Hamilton called him — was euthanized in July because of health problems in old age, Greengard said.

Earlier this year, Hamilton told WOOD-TV that he had tied the dog to a U-Haul truck while he walked to a gas station. “Never felt the same after losing him,” he said.

The skateboard that Tony Hawk used to make history in 1999 has sold for a record-breaking $1.15 million, according to a statement from Julien’s Auctions on Wednesday.

The deck, called the Birdhouse “Falcon 2,” was used by Hawk to land the first-ever 900 trick — a 2-and-a-half-turn trick few skateboarders dare to try — at the 1999 San Francisco X Games.

After numerous failed attempts, Hawk successfully flipped twice through the air and landed the move. The packed crowd roared and announcers screamed on the live broadcast.

By then, Hawk, was 31-year old and already a decorated skateboarder. He had won 73 championships by age 25 and was world champion of vert skating — where skateboarders careen back and forth on a steep ramp — for 12 straight years in the 1980s and 1990s.

But the historic landing at the turn of the century cast Hawk as an indelible household name, and it made him one of the most well-known trailblazers in the sport.

Hawk said in an interview with The Associated Press earlier this week that he hoped the anonymous buyer was “someone who truly appreciates it, or that event or that object meant something to them and that it’s not just a flex because they have the money.”

Hawk, who many credit with thrusting skateboarding into mainstream pop culture, went on to win 10 X Games gold medals.

The auctioneer said that the $1.15 million sale was the largest price tag on skateboard memorabilia in history.

The collection up for sale also included other exorbitantly priced Hawk paraphernalia, ranging from an autographed Frosted Flakes cereal box that went for $512 to the scraped knee pads he wore to make history in 1999, which topped $57,000.

A portion of the proceeds from the auction will benefit The Skatepark Project, Hawk’s nonprofit foundation that helps build skateparks.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Residents of a San Francisco Bay Area city are on the lookout for an aggressive squirrel that has sent at least two people to the emergency room for medical treatment.

Joan Heblack told ABC affiliate KGO-TV that she was walking in the Lucas Valley neighborhood of San Rafael when a squirrel seemingly came out of nowhere and attacked her leg, clawing and biting.

“It clamped onto my leg. The tail was flying up here. I was like, ‘Get it off me, get off me!’,” Heblack said.

Isabel Campoy also said she was attacked while walking in the same area. The squirrel launched itself from the ground to her face and wound up on her arm, leaving it bloody, she said.

Both women went to the emergency room, the TV station reported in its Monday story.

Flyers have now been posted, warning residents that the squirrel is no joke and that more than five people have been attacked by a ”very mean squirrel” that “comes out of nowhere.”

Vanessa Potter of WildCare, a wildlife rescue organization in San Rafael, told KGO-TV that the aggressive behavior likely comes from the squirrel being fed and cared for by humans when it was a baby.

She said squirrels are not vectors for rabies. Experts say the public should not feed wild animals.

The city manager’s office did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment. San Rafael is in Marin County, about 20 miles (32 kilometers) north of San Francisco .

PEMBROKE, Maine (AP) — A bull moose that fell into an abandoned well in Maine was pulled to safety during an elaborate five hour rescue.

The operation happened Wednesday after Cole Brown, whose family owned the forested land in northern Maine, spotted a pair of antlers. He heard a noise and initially thought it was turkeys but, upon, closer inspect, realized it was something a lot bigger.

“He walks over and, through the thick alders and bushes, he saw the antlers, just the antlers peeking out,” said Delaney Gardner, Brown’s stepsister who videotaped the rescue. “He knew that an animal of the size, he was going to need some back up just in case it was, you know, injured or just stuck there.”

The family alerted the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries & Wildlife. They sent a biologist who sedated the moose and then wardens put straps on the animal. Using an excavator provided by the family, they gingerly lifted the moose out of the 9-foot deep well.

“Once the sedation wore off, the moose took off running, no worse for wear other than perhaps his bruised ego,” the agency said on its Facebook page.

Gardner said the successful rescue left her with a mix of “relief and happiness.”

“This is a majestic giant animal in such a precarious situation,” she said. “So to be able to see everyone come together in all these different ways that they needed to was absolutely incredible. And then seeing it work out was just so satisfying and heartwarming.”

Gardner said the family didn’t know the well — which is likely decades old — was on their 100 acres of land until the moose fell into it. Since then, they have capped the well and are considering their options, including digging it out and utilizing it since it there may a water source nearby.

“For now it’s covered and no more animals or people will be falling into it,” she said.

ADDISON, Vt. (AP) — NEEDS EDIT — HOLD FOR PHOTOS AND VIDEO FROM AMANDA SWINHART, THEN MOVE SPOT

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Celine Thouin learned a lot as a student at Franklin Pierce University, and one of the skills she has held onto the longest is how to use an ancient spear-throwing tool.

She got to share that skill with fellow Vermonters on Saturday. Thouin, 38 and a veteran of the Franklin Pierce atlatl team, was one of a few dozen participants in the Northeast Open Atlatl Championship in Addison, Vermont.

Humans invented the atlatl thousands of years ago for use as a spear-throwing hunting tool. They were used to hunt massive animals such as woolly mammoths in the days long before recorded history.

Now, they are the passion of a group of hobbyists and anthropology lovers who see the atlatl as a way to learn about history and have fun.

“I think it’s just a low-pressure sport. Really, really fun,” said Thouin, who won the 2020 competition and whose children are also atlatl enthusiasts. “It’s also experimental archaeology, which is incredibly fun. We get to use the same weapons that were used 15,000 years ago all over the world.”

The competition took place at Chimney Point State Historic Site in Addison, near Lake Champlain and the New York state border. It was the thirtieth annual event and a part of Vermont’s Archaeology Month, organizers said.

The contest was open to all ages and allowed participants to shoot for accuracy and distance. Throws of more than 800 feet (244 meters) have been recorded, though even a much shorter throw than that takes a good degree of skill.

For Douglas Bassett, a past president of the World Atlatl Association and another participant in Saturday’s event, the history of the atlatl is as interesting as its use. He described it as “a stick by which you can throw another stick,” and he said it was used all over the ancient world.

Bassett confessed to having no idea how to pronounce the name of the tool. Most sources say it is aht-LAHT-l, but the exact pronunciation might be lost to the mists of time, he said.

“The language is gone as the people are gone, so I don’t know much about the pronunciations,” Bassett said. “But all kinds of languages, all around the world. It may pretty much have been on every continent. Even when Antarctica melts, maybe we’ll find evidence of people throwing spears there, too, with the atlatl.”

BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — A cloud of smoke from two pounds of methamphetamine seized by the FBI and being incinerated inside a Montana animal shelter prompted its evacuation and sent workers to the hospital, city officials in Billings said.

The smoke started to fill the building during a drug burn on Wednesday, apparently because of negative pressure that sucked it back inside, Billings Assistant City Administrator Kevin Iffland said Friday. A fan was supposed to be on hand in such situations to reverse the pressure so smoke would flow out of the building, but Iffland said it wasn’t readily available.

The incinerator is used primarily to burn the carcasses of animals euthanized or collected by the city’s animal control division. But every couple of months local law enforcement or FBI agents use it to burn seized narcotics, Iffland said.

Fourteen workers from the Yellowstone Valley Animal Shelter went to the hospital as a precaution, he said. The dogs and cats at the shelter were relocated or put into foster homes.

Some workers had symptoms such as not feeling well. “I don’t know if it was from the smoke inhalation or exactly what it was,” Iffland said.

Billings resident Jay Ettlemen went to the shelter on Friday to donate dog food and said he was angry when he found out about the drug burns.

“Why the hell are they destroying drugs inside the city limits?” Ettlemen asked. “There’s so many other places in the middle of nowhere.”

The FBI routinely uses outside facilities to conduct controlled drug evidence burns, agency spokesperson Sandra Barker said. She referred further questions to Billings officials.

A city animal control supervisor was present for Wednesday’s burn but declined to go the hospital, Iffland said. The FBI agents were told to go to the hospital by their supervisor.

The incinerator is meant to operate at a certain temperature so it doesn’t emit toxins. Iffland said officials were trying to determine if it was at the appropriate temperature Wednesday.

The shelter will remain closed until it can be tested for contamination. Shelter workers also were tested for potential exposure to methamphetamine, but Iffland said he did not know the results.

FORT WAYNE, Ind. (AP) — When Alex Babich, 47, stood in his backyard in Fort Wayne, Indiana, craning his neck to look 35 feet into the sky, he wasn’t just staring at a sunflower. He was looking at his roots — and his future legacy.

The flower, nicknamed “Clover” and confirmed Wednesday by Guinness World Records as the tallest sunflower ever measured, stretches as high as a telephone pole.

Babich, born and raised in Ukraine, immigrated to the U.S. at age 14 in 1991 after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Seven years ago, he started growing sunflowers as a symbol of his love for his home country.

“Sunflowers are the national flower of Ukraine, so it’s special to me,” he said.

Babich’s first sunflower was 13 feet tall, then 15, then 19. Quickly, he began asking himself, “How far can we take this?”

He collected seeds from his tallest specimens to refine a genetic line, swapped seeds from other giant sunflower growers and formulated a secret plant feed he now calls a “family heirloom.” He planted each seed indoors under grow lights in the early spring before transferring them outside. Then he sketched a blueprint of a sunflower scaffold on a napkin and began building.

Babich said the record-breaking flower was the result of “trial and error over years.”

“It’s one of my kids,” he said. “You’re out there every day taking care of it.”

Babich’s 10-year-old son also had an important contribution that earned the towering flower its name. He would climb onto the scaffolding and place four-leaf clovers on the sunflower’s leaves, for good luck.

“I’m going to die someday, but the stories of this flower will live on,” he said. “My kids will be telling this story to the grandkids.”

When measuring day came on Sept. 3, Babich was nervous.

About 85 people had gathered to watch, including several master gardeners from a local university and representatives from the Allen County Department of Weights and Measures. Babich was on a WhatsApp call with a representative from Guinness World Records. A camera crew was filming, and a drone flew overhead. Even Icy D. Eagle, the mascot of the local Komets ice hockey team, was there, according to Guinness.

They used a 40-foot cherry picker to measure the flower. Clover was 35 feet and 9 inches, 5 feet taller than the previous world record holder in Germany.

“It’s very emotional,” Babich said. “It’s as good as it gets for someone who grows giants.”

Growing up amid food shortages in Ukraine sparked Babich’s love for gardening. His affection for sunflowers deepened after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

“We just pray that the war will end, that the killing will stop,” Babich said. “We just hope this inspires some people in the right places. It’s been long enough.”

The sunflower has long been a national symbol representing peace in Ukraine, and since 2022, it has become a symbol of solidarity with the embattled country. In one viral video clip in the war’s early days, a Ukrainian woman confronted a Russian soldier, ultimately offering to “put sunflower seeds in your pocket so they grow when you die.”

In 1996, ministers from the U.S., Russia and Ukraine planted sunflowers at the Pervomaysk missile base to mark the country’s nuclear weapon disarmament. In 1986, after the explosion at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant that later brought Babich’s family to the U.S., scientists planted sunflowers to remove toxins from the soil.

Babich’s sunflower will soon be the star of a documentary, titled “Bloom,” planned for release this summer. In the meantime, Babich has started planting sunflowers around campsites he visited with his family and passing out seed packets to children at festivals.

Plastered onto the seed packets are stickers with the words “Spread the love – sunflower seeds.”

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Fernando reported from Chicago.