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Mike Pingree

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March 18, 2001

OW! OUCH! OK, I'LL GIVE YOU SEVEN DOLLARS: Danny Johnson, 38, a traveling salesman, offered to give his colleague Kevin Hicks, 23, a haircut for $3, but, after he was finished, upped his price to $7. Hicks refused, according to Boulder, Colo., police, and emphasized his point by punching Johnson in the head. Johnson, the cops say, retaliated by stabbing Hicks with the scissors four times in the back. Both have been arrested. 
The men, who sell magazine subscriptions door-to-door, have had problems with each other before.

OH THANK YOU, AUNTIE: Billie Jean Rogers is a good aunt and would do anything she could for her nephew, even helping him to become her niece. Police charged Mrs. Rogers, 61, with murdering her 74-year-old husband so she could give the nephew, Harry Titlow, $70,000 of the dead man's money to pay for a sex-change operation. The husband was smothered to death. 
The nephew, also known as Vonlee Titlow, has also been charged in the slaying.

KING OF THE JUNGLE, EH? Swarms of vicious bloodsucking flies, known as  "stomoxys," have descended on Tanzania's Ngorongoro wildlife park, and are biting wild animals to death. 
So far, they have killed six lions  Conservationist Nim Shallua said, "The flies bite the lions and then keep biting their wounds, inflicting a lot of pain and traumatizing them. The lions are dying of trauma."

I TOLD YOU ONCE, HE'S NOT HERE: Cincinnati, Ohio, police raided Mary Watkin's apartment because she had the same last name as a murderer they were looking for. She explained to them that she is not related to the suspect, and, in fact, has never heard of him, so they left. A few days later, they raided her apartment again. 
She is suing.

GOOD TO HAVE YOU BACK: A week before her death at age 28, Um Sokhom told her father that she would come back as a bird. A Buddhist who believes in reincarnation, the father was not surprised to find a peacock sitting on her grave in Kompong Chhnang, Cambodia, three days after she died. He told the Koh Santepheap newspaper that he said to the bird, "Sokhom, if your soul is really in the peacock, please come to the bed where you used to sleep. The bird seemed to understand ... and jumped on the bed and relaxed." 
The peacock now lives with the family.

Mike Pingree writes another Looking Glass column in the Boston Sunday Herald. You can read it by clicking here:
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists.html

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