Text 45: Muggers

1. After he had been robbed of $20 in Winnipeg, Canada, Roger Morse asked for his wallet back. The mugger agreed, handed over his own wallet by mistake, and fled — leaving Roger $250 better off.

2. In Camden, New Jersey, Clarence Gland and Kin Williams were taking a late-night stroll when a car pulled up and two men got out. One of them produced a long black snake and shoved it toward Gland's face, and while the couple stood rigid, his associate made off with cash, a personal stereo, and a wristwatch. A snake expert later identified the reptile from its description as a completely harmless rat snake. In other words, it was not loaded.

3. A gun-toting mugger made a bad mistake when he held up a man who was walking home through an alley in West Virginia. Finding his victim was carrying only $13, he demanded a check for $300. The man wrote out the check, and the thief was caught the next day when he tried to cash it. As the cops said afterward: "The crook wasn't very bright."

4. An Italian who turned to snatching handbags to finance his drug addiction came unstuck, when he robbed his own mother by mistake. The woman was walking along the street when her son, who didn't see her face until it was too late, sped past on a motorcycle and snatched her bag. Recognising him, his mother was so angry she reported him to the police.

5. Belgian police quickly solved two Brussels street robberies when they heard the victims' description of the culprit: he was wearing a bright-yellow jacket and had a cast on one leg. The man was caught within 15 minutes of his second robbery:

6. Purse snatcher Daniel Pauchin ended up in the hospital, when he tried to rob two women in a street in Nice, France. The victims were burly transvestites who beat him up and left him with broken ribs.

7. Mandy Hammond from Arnold, England, went out with two friends. As they waited for a taxi, a man walked up to them and demanded Mandy's lipstick and eyeshadow. The group thought he was joking, but he then pulled a gun, held it to her friend Paul Upton's head and announced, "Don't laugh. I've got a gun, and I'll shoot if you haven't got any lipstick.' Lipstick was promptly produced, and the man strolled off. In the same month a gunman struck in Scarborough, England. Wearing a hood and dark glasses, he forced a pharmacist assistant, at gunpoint, to fill a bag with pimple cream. Police were said to be "puzzled".

Text 46: Thieves

1. Edward Williams of Houston, Texas, was fined $10,000 and put on 10 years' probation. He had formerly been a storeroom supervisor at Houston's Jefferson Davis Hospital, and he had been convicted of stealing 79,680 rolls of toilet paper. No one knew for sure what he'd done with the purloined paper.

2. Car thief in Holloway, north of London, got away with something special. Tucked away in the trunk of his car was a box containing 120 plastic earholes. They were plastic molds made for the Royal National Throat, Nose and Ear Hospital, to allow hearing aids to be tailor-made for patients. One can only imagine the thief trying to sell them on the open market: "Ere, buddy — wanna buy some plastic ear'oles?"

3. The day after winning $640,000 in Italy's national lottery, Flavio Maestrini was arrested for stealing $400 from a shop. Appearing in court, he explained that he didn't enjoy spending money unless it was stolen.

4. A Russian man arrived at his country retreat near Arkhangelsk, Russia, on the White Sea and found the entire house stolen, complete with outhouses and fences, leaving just a vegetable patch.

5. Members of a British Rail cricket team turned up for the first match of the season at their field near Kidderminster, England. The pavilion had disappeared. How one steals an eight-room building without anyone noticing remains a mystery.

6. Alan Omonde appeared in court in Uganda on the charge of stealing an old man's big edible rat. Omonde was given 12 strokes of the cane for stealing John Onyait's smoked rat, while Onyait lamented that he'd been deprived of his favourite dish. Omonde was also ordered to hunt down and trap five more edible rats as a fine payable to his elderly victim.