The heavy hand of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service landed on 11-year-old Skylar Capo and her mom in June, after an agent happened to spot Skylar holding a baby woodpecker in her hands at a Lowes home improvement store in Fredericksburg, Va. Actually, Skylar had minutes before saved the woodpecker from the primed teeth of a house cat and was providing temporary TLC, intending to release the bird when the trauma had passed.
The agent, apparently, was unimpressed, reciting a provision of the Migratory Bird Act, and two weeks later, another Fish and Wildlife agent knocked on the Capos' door (accompanied by a Virginia state trooper) and served Mrs. Capo a citation calling for a $535 fine. In August, Fish and Wildlife officials relented, calling the agent's action a mistake.
   
Compelling Explanations
Though a university study released in June linked birth defects to the controversial mining industry practice of mountaintop removal, lawyers for the National Mining Association offered a quick, industry-friendly rebuttal: Since the area covered by the study was in West Virginia, any birth defects could well be explained merely as inbreeding. A week later, the lawyers thought better and edited out that insinuation.
• Michael Jones, 50, told a magistrate in Westminster, England, in May he did not "assault" a police officer when he urinated on him at a railway station a month earlier. Jones claimed, instead, he was "urinating in self-defense" in that the water supply had been "poisoned by the mafia." The magistrate explained Jones' argument "is not realistically going to be a viable defense."
• Inmate Kyle Richards filed a federal lawsuit in July against Michigan's prison system because of the no-pornography policy in effect for the Macomb County jail (a violation of Richards' "constitutional rights"). Other states permit such possession, claimed Richards. Additionally, Richards claimed to be indigent and therefore entitled to pornography at the government's expense -- to avoid a "poor standard of living."

Ironies
When Laura Diprimo, 43, and Thomas Lee, 28, were arrested for child endangerment in Louisville, Ky., in June, it appeared to be yet another instance of a mother leaving an infant locked in a hot car (91-degree heat index outside) while frolicking elsewhere (drinking with Lee at the Deja Vu club). According to a report on WDRB-TV, while the two were in the police car en route to jail, Lee complained that the back seat of the cruiser was uncomfortably warm.
• Undignified, Ironic Deaths: (1) A 55-year-old man participating in a protest of New York's mandatory-helmet law was killed after losing control of his motorcycle and hitting his head on the pavement, even though doctors said he surely would have survived had he been wearing a regulation helmet (Lafayette, N.Y., July).
(2) An 18-year-old man, celebrating on the evening of May 21 after it had become clear the world would not end as predicted by a radio evangelist, drowned after jumping playfully off a bridge into Michigan's Kalamazoo River.
   
The Continuing Crisis
• The veterans' support organization Home for Our Troops had recently started to build a 2,700-square-foot house in Augusta, Ga., to ease life for Army Sgt. 1st Class Sean Gittens, who had suffered concussive head injuries in Afghanistan and is partially paralyzed. However, in June, the Knob Hill Property Owners Association, which had provisionally approved the design, changed its mind. "The problem is," one association member told the Augusta Chronicle, there are "5,000-square-foot homes all the way up and down the street" and that such a "small" house would bring down property values. "It just doesn't fit."

Least Competent Criminals
Clue-Droppers: (1) Steven Long, 23, was arrested in South Daytona, Fla., in May on suspicion of theft after a patrol officer spotted him pedaling his bike down a street with a 59-inch TV set on the handlebars. (2) Matthew Davis, 32, pleaded guilty to theft in Cairns, Australia, in June; he had been arrested on suspicion because police had noticed a large office safe protruding "precariously" out the back of his vehicle as he drove by. (3) Stephen Kirkbride, 46, was convicted of theft in Kendal, England, in June after a clothing store clerk, on the witness stand, pointed out that Kirkbride had in fact worn to court that day the very coat he had stolen from the store.