This Gig Stinks

Omni, a plant-based pet food company in Britain, is offering dog owners more than $6,000 to “record their experience of introducing their dog to a plant-based diet, monitoring their bowel movements, stool odor, health, energy levels, behavior, sleep pattern and physical attributes, such as weight, skin and fur condition” over a period of two months, according to the company’s website. Omni will provide a free supply of its pet food for the gig and will cover the cost of visits to a pet nutritionist, who will oversee the pets’ transition to plant-based food. Those dog owners who successfully complete the poop-monitoring period will earn the aforementioned cash for their work, while their dogs will receive a supply of dog toys and vegan treats. Applications will be accepted on Omni’s website through March 31.

Check, Please!

Michael Spressler, 58, of Brick, New Jersey, thought he had broken a tooth when he bit into a raw clam and felt something hard in his mouth during a Presidents Day weekend visit to his favorite Jersey Shore seafood restaurant, The Lobster House. “I thought one of my molars cracked,” Spressler told NJ Advance Media. But instead of one of his own pearly whites, Spressler found a perfectly round white pearl. “I’ve been eating clams all my life. This is the first time this ever happened to me,” Spressler said. Indeed, the odds of finding a pearl in a clam are said to be roughly 1 in 10,000, and The Pearl Source website says the little gem, which Spressler’s wife, Maria, would like to have set in a piece of jewelry, could be worth anywhere from $50 to $100,000.

Golden Ticket

On Oct. 26, 1984, Northwestern student Michael Cole attended a basketball game alone, having been unable to find a friend to use the extra ticket he had purchased for $8.50. Thirty-eight years later, on Feb. 27, Cole, now 55, watched that spare ticket, which he had held onto as a keepsake, sell for $468,000 at auction. What was so special about the ticket? It just happens to be the only known intact ticket from Michael Jordan’s debut game with the Chicago Bulls. Cole, whose 2012 Kia Sorento died just one week before the auction ended, said he plans to use some of his earnings to replace it with “a sensible used car.”

BY THE EDITORS AT ANDREW MCMEEL
Distributed by Universal Press Syndicate