Eideard

I’ll just stay quite still and no one will notice me

A kangaroo is for the high jump after escaping from its owner and going on a knicker-nicking spree.

Benji bounced from garden to garden collecting ladies’ lingerie as it went. The two-year-old marsupial was only caught when one victim looked out of her kitchen window and saw it hopping it with her undies.

A spokesman for the police in Prague, Czech Republic, explained: “We had a call from the kangaroo’s owner saying it had escaped. At the same time, we started getting reports of a number of thefts from washing lines.”

He added: “We didn’t think they could possibly be related until the animal was caught red-handed.”

Benji’s owner Petr Hlabovic, 35, said: “I’m very relieved to have him back. I’ve got no idea what he thought he was up to – he certainly didn’t pick up the habit from me.”

That’s what they all say.

Thanks, Ursarodinia

Prague — They say the Golem, a Jewish giant with glowing eyes and supernatural powers, is lurking once again in the attic of the Old-New Synagogue here.

The Golem, according to Czech legend, was fashioned from clay and brought to life by a rabbi to protect Prague’s 16th-century ghetto from persecution, and is said to be called forth in times of crisis. True to form, he is once again experiencing a revival and, in this commercial age, has spawned a one-monster industry.

There are Golem hotels; Golem door-making companies; Golem clay figurines (made in China); a recent musical starring a dancing Golem; and a Czech strongman called the Golem who bends iron bars with his teeth. The Golem has also infiltrated Czech cuisine: the menu at the non-kosher restaurant called the Golem features a “rabbi’s pocket of beef tenderloin” and a $7 “crisis special” of roast pork and potatoes that would surely have rattled the venerable Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel, the Golem’s supposed maker.

Even the first lady, Michelle Obama, paid her respects, when she visited Rabbi Loew’s grave last month and, following Jewish tradition, placed a prayer on a piece of paper and put it near his tombstone.

Eva Bergerova, a theater director who is staging a play about the Golem, said it was no coincidence that this Central European story was ubiquitous at a time of swine flu and economic distress. “The Golem starts wandering the streets during times of crises, when people are worried,” Ms. Bergerova said. “He is a projection of society’s neuroses, a symbol of our fears and concerns. He is the ultimate crisis monster…”

RTFA. Interesting as is always the best of mythology.

Some superstitious folk think George W. Bush was a Golem. They’re wrong of course. He was a dybbuk!