Odds and Ends – April 20, 2018 – April 26, 2018

Canadian teen wins $1K a week

Quebec City (AP) – A Canadian teenager who purchased her first lottery ticket to celebrate her 18th birthday hit the jackpot and will receive $1,000 Canadian a week for the rest of her life. Charlie Lagarde was celebrating with a bottle of champagne and a $4 scratch-off ticket earlier this month when she hit the grand prize in the Gagnant a Vie lottery. The prize would be worth just over $775 per week in American dollars. She was joined by family and friends when she collected the first payment on Monday. She told lottery officials that she hopes to study photography.

Carnival Cruise trades cruise

Prospect, Va. (AP) – Carnival Cruise rolled into a small Virginia town this week on the hunt for a local teen and his coveted Snapchat handle @CarnivalCruise. The company surprised 15-year-old Darian Lipscomb at his Prospect, Virginia, home Tuesday night after peppering the town with signs asking “Hey Prospect, does anyone know Darian?” The Richmond Times-Dispatch reports the company offered to trade Lipscomb a free trip for his family aboard its newest ship, Carnival Horizon, in exchange for his Snapchat handle. The net worth of the trip is about $5,000. Organizers say Lipscomb will receive customized surprises throughout the trip, which will be documented on the cruise’s social channels. The Dispatch reports the company said the trade was a fun way to claim the handle and reward a ‘superfan.’

Test reveals why female lion in

Oklahoma City (AP) – Lab results have revealed the answer to a mystery at an Oklahoma zoo: Just what caused a female lion to sprout a mane. The Oklahoma City Zoo says in its March newsletter that testing at the University of Tennessee found the African lioness named Bridget has an elevated level of androstenedione, a hormone that can contribute to developing male features. Veterinarians compared Bridget’s blood to samples from her sister, who has no mane. Bridget’s blood also contained a higher level of cortisol, which regulates metabolism and the immune system. The zoo says the results likely mean the 18-year-old lioness has a benign tumor that’s producing the hormones, but that her health is excellent. The zoo says female lions with manes are not unheard of, but they are rare.

House ransacked after being

Longmont, Colo. (AP) – A Colorado woman says her house was ransacked by people who mistakenly thought it was the site of an estate sale. The Daily Camera reports Mary Andrews says she left her Longmont home unlocked and came back Friday morning to find people taking items from her house. Longmont police told Andrews it was a “very, very bad misunderstanding.” Andrews says a house just a few doors down was having an estate sale, and somehow someone got into her house and began spreading the rumor that an estate sale was going on there and that everything was free. Despite the mix-up, Andrews says people should have found something odd about an estate sale where everything was being given away at no cost. Police say they have closed the case because they do not have any suspect leads. Longmont is about an hour north of Denver.

Cat-and-mouse game: Mountain

Azusa, Calif. (AP) – A mountain lion roamed through backyards in a neighborhood outside Los Angeles before wildlife officers tranquilized it. The lion was spotted Monday morning in the eastern Los Angeles County community of Azusa, near the San Gabriel Mountains wilderness. TV news helicopters showed it pawing at the door of a home and jumping onto the roof of a shed, then leaping over a fence. Azusa police contained the big cat until wildlife officers arrived and used social media to warn residents to stay indoors. After being tranquilized, the sleeping lion was loaded onto a pickup truck to be moved out of the neighborhood.