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Environmental Graffiti has a great list of crazy tools inmates used in their escape attempts. My personal favorite is the shotgun above.
This was more than just ingenious; it worked as well! A shotgun made of iron bedposts. The charge came from lead in curtain tape and was set off by AA batteries. Prisoners took a hostage, fired at a pane of glass and broke out into a waiting car on May 21, 1984.
They’re all fascinating though.
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A farmer in south Armagh, Northen Ireland, thought someone was trying to steal his cattle, as they were found outside several times after being locked in the barn for the night. When a camera was installed in the barn, the culprit was found. It was Daisy, the smartest of the cows. Link -via Arbroath
The cat was walking around the second story ledge of an apartment building, apparently not wanting to jump down and unable to get inside. YouTube user MrsChantrea says,
Suddenly I saw this cat outside the window and decided to film it because it was cute, didn`t dream of it doing something like this!
-via Buzzfeed
A 3-year-old cat named Pepper used a trick worthy of Houdini to escape from a burning kitchen in Stoke Gabriel, South Devon, England. Frightened by an exploding microwave, he leapt to a window and nudged the catch open with his nose. Neighbors noticed smoke billowing from the open window and alerted the fire department. Homeowners Phil and Sharon White are grateful the fire was contained.
Phil said: “There is some damage but nothing compared to what it could have been.”
Phil’s wife Sharon added that Pepper is a law unto himself and has a fiery streak. “But all is forgiven now, ” she said.
She said that neighbours also deserve credit.
Sharon said: “We are thankful that they did not just dismiss it as a bonfire. They rallied around and even directed the fire service here through the narrow lanes.”
Pepper is still a bit spooked by his ordeal. “But he is still managing to eat plenty of food,” said Sharon.
Amy Windom of Atlanta, Georgia was the victim of a break-in at her home. The gunman struck her with a handgun and tied her hands to the bed. She was left tied up for hours, while the intruder robbed the house and left. But Windom didn’t take it lying down!
Officers say the woman remained tied up for five hours before using an unusual method to notify police – the woman had her laptop with her and used her feet to type a message to her boyfriend who then called police.
Link (with video) -via Arbroath
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There’s a good reason that all those Hollywood movies show prisoners escaping in laundry trucks. An inmate who escaped an El Paso jail in a garbage truck found out the hard way:
After escaping through the garbage disposal system, Medina-Bailon then hid in a dumpster when the trash was picked up by a garbage truck. The sheriff’s office checked with the company providing garbage service to the jail facility which revealed they had already dumped their load at the landfill in Sunland Park, N.M. [...]
U.S. Marshals confirmed to ABC-7 Friday afternoon that a body found in a Sunland Park, N.M. landfill was that of a federal inmate who escaped the El Paso jail earlier in the day.
This cockatoo’s name is Billy, but they should have named him Houdini! -via reddit
Two days after Maddie Tibble and her family moved to a new house, their family pet, a tortoise named Lottie, escaped. Two years later, they found the runaway tortoise … one and a half mile away from home!
Doubtless a hare could have made the journey across the fields and down nearby Blackshots Lane in a matter of minutes. But Lottie took her time and spent 22 months to emerge into the open and be spotted by a animal-friendly passer-by.
Vet Lizzie Rigby, 36, checked Lottie over and gave her a clean bill of health. She said: ‘We looked her over and then checked for a microchip with a scanner and she had one. ‘We then contacted the chip company to get the owner’s detailed and found she had been missing for two years. We were amazed, considering she was in such good nick.’
Miss Rigby added: ‘Tortoises are quite slow, she didn’t get very far, who knows where she has been? ‘She must have found somewhere to curl up and hibernate for the winter. We were very surprised because the last winter was so cold but she survived.’
If you do the math, you’ll come up with 0.00009 mph: Link
How would Cracked commemorate Memorial Day? By posting a list of The 5 Most Badass Prison Escapes in the History of War. These escapes took imagination, intelligence, and nerves of steel, plus a fair amount of desperation. Henri Giraud was 63 years old when the Germans captured him during World War II and took him to “escape proof” Konigstein Castle. Giraud spent two years planning the perfect escape.
First, he addressed the part of prison escape that every other escapee forgets–what you’ll do once you’re outside the walls. The prison was right there in Germany, after all, and he didn’t even know the language. So, he convinced his captors to start classes in how to learn German.
Next, he needed to coordinate with somebody on the outside. His letters to and from his wife were read and censored by the guards, but they somehow developed a system of embedding coded messages that the captors never picked up on. Next, he got ahold of a map and memorized every detail of the surrounding geography.
All right, now there’s just the matter of the, uh, 150-foot drop outside the prison walls that had made escape utterly impossible for the last eight centuries.
He and a friend came up with some twine, thin stuff like they use to bind packages. They twisted it together, bit by bit, until they had 150 feet of it. It took a year.
Last, he got himself a Tyrolean hat.
Together, these preparations helped Giraud pull it off. Link -via Gorilla Mask
An unnamed 35-year-old female inmate broke out of a prison in Breda, the Netherlands. She was housed on prison grounds in a special building for inmates preparing for release. To escape, she dug a tunnel with a spoon!
The woman’s tunnel began in a cellar under the building’s kitchen, with its entrance concealed by a removable hatch. According to Dutch public broadcaster NOS, the police are assuming that the fugitive had at least one accomplice, who is believed to have loosened paving stones that were part of a sidewalk next to the detention center, allowing the prisoner to emerge from her tunnel.
The woman had only 22 months left on her murder sentence. She is still at large. Link -via Arbroath
(image credit: Flickr user Jeremy Brooks)
A female hippopotamus named Nikica swam out of her enclosure at a private zoo in Plavnica, Montenegro when flood waters rose over the fence. The two-ton hippo has stayed close to the zoo, but cannot be rounded up until the flood recedes.
A spokesman for Montenegro’s natural disasters commission, which responds to floods, said the law required animals that can endanger human lives to be killed. But state veterinary authorities said they were not entitled to kill animals.
Zoo owner Dragan Pejovic insisted Nikica is not dangerous, “unless someone attacks and kicks her.”
He said that her movements were being tracked by the zoo’s private security and that she was “tame and peaceful”.
Pejovic added that Nikica now had nowhere to return because the zoo, on a small island in a lake south of the capital, remains flooded. She was being fed with loaves of bread and bales of hay at a swimming pool of a restaurant owned by Pejovic and his brother.
(image credit: Savo Prelevic/AFP/Getty Images)
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Poster by Lebedev Studios
From the people at Art Lebedev Studios, this poster would make a great wall decoration while serving as a reference guide in case of the unthinkable. And oh yeah, it glows in the dark.
Link. Previously, Lebedev’s See-Through Tractor Trailer.
Necessity may be the mother of inventions, but prison seems to be a particularly fertile birthing ground. Take a look at these collection of improvised tools, escape equipments and weapons made by inmates undoubtedly inspired by MacGyver.
This one to the left is the crucifix shiv:
Disguised as a wooden crucifix; found in an inmate’s cell in Wolfenbüttel prison, Germany, sometime around 1994; intended for use in an escape or as a general weapon. At that time a lot of crucifixes were fashioned in prison woodshops until jailers finally dug their true purpose.
Marc Steinmetz has the photos of what surprisingly creative inmates have made (first published in Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin in 1999) : Link
The Maryland Zoo recently unveiled a new prairie dog exhibit. The zoo’s prairie dogs had not been on display for four years, until a new $500,000 enclosure was designed and built. Despite a concrete base, aircraft wire, and slick walls, several prairie dogs got out of the habitat within a few minutes! None got away, as zookeepers responded with nets.
Zoo staff members say the animals cannot burrow their way out because the former Kodiak bear environment is essentially a large concrete swimming bowl. The soil depth at Prairie Dog Town ranges from 6 feet to 8 feet.
“The dirt must be deeper than 36 inches in order for the prairie dogs to make their burrows under the frost line,” Kranz said. “We took soil samples from the old exhibit so the soils could be matched exactly to what they were used to having.”
After foiling the escape attempt, zoo workers adjusted wire fencing and installed more slippery plastic on the walls.
Link -via Boing Boing
(image credit: Kim Hairston/Baltimore Sun)
They often say a mother’s love has no boundaries, and this series of photos shows the length the squirrel mother will go to to keep her baby safe.
When the dog corners the frightened young one she leaps in for the attack and lets it get to safety so quickly the bemused dog is left wondering what happened, as they both scamper safely up a tree
A true tale of valiance from the animal kingdom.
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by Jake.
Two New Zealand prisoners who were handcuffed together as they fled a courthouse foiled their own getaway when they ran to opposite sides of a light pole, slammed into each other and fell to the ground. Jailers nabbed them as they struggled to their feet. Their escape on Wednesday was captured by a CCTV camera at Hastings District Court on New Zealand's North Island. The footage shows the two men trying to make a break for it - but apparently forgetting they were joined at the wrist.
- via naacal
From the Upcoming Queue, submitted by 
Vision is another escape-from-the-room game, sure, but it’s pretty. Be sure to examine every nook and cranny – you’re going to need keys or combinations to open almost everything. And take note of the shapes of things. That’s all I’m saying! Have fun and good luck.
Link via Jayisgames
