Weird Week: Transvestite firefighters, and panda dung tea

• Sometimes in an emergency you don’t have time to get appropriately dressed. At least that’s what I told those Jehovah’s Witnesses when I ran out the shower to answer the door.

But you’ve got to hand it to the firefighters of Sedan, Minnesota. During a St Patrick’s Day parade they thought they’d show off their new fire engine by hanging off it dressed in drag. Fair enough, but when a car nearby burst into flames they sped into action and saved the day - and they were then filmed fighting the blaze in floor-length ball gowns.

• Has Spring-Heeled Jack returned? For those of you unfamiliar with the legendary figure, he was a mystery attacker in and around London first appearing in 1837, said to be capable of leaping an entire house and breathing blue flames into his victim’s faces.

Countless newspaper reports lead to a frenzied fascination with the mythical figure, the debate over his alleged existence rages on to this day. Read more here.

Well now a family travelling through Epsom, south of London, were reportedly terrified when a dark faceless figure darted across the road in front of their taxi before leaping a 15 foot wall.

The Martin family have likened this mysterious figure of unbelievable movements to Spring-Heeled Jack.

Could it be that the one-time scourge of Britain has come back to continue his reign of terror? And if so, where has he been since his last sighting in Birmingham in 1986?

• One man who needs no supernatural powers to fly is Jarno Smeets of the Netherlands. This week he successfully tested his own homemade bird wings, flapping himself about 100 metres off the ground. Sounds unlikely? Then just click here to watch the video.

If he starts selling the wings, rest assured that Scotsman.com’s intrepid gadget reviewers wil be hoping to land a set.

• Few criminals take an arrest with dignity. There’s nothing worse than being caught red-handed and hanging your head in shame.

But I doubt anyone will have sympathy for Mark Thompson of West Virginia, after he was arrested for stabbing a goat while dressed in a bra and panties. To make things worse Thompson admitted to police that he was “high on bath salts” at the time.

Bath Salts. Really. How long before the kids start on Grandad’s talcum?

• Just in case you’ve always wanted to try Panda dung, your luck is in at last!

The unique selling point of a new type of tea, said to be the world’s most expensive, is that the leaves were grown in Panda excrement. That’s the main reason Chinese entrepreneur An Yanshi is selling the tea for around £132 per cup.

Yashi’s motivation for growing the tea in panda dung is simple. He told reporters that the panda is “a machine that is churning out organic fertilizer.”

He added: “They keep eating and they keep producing feces.”

So do I, but it won’t make my tea taste any better, and I certainly won’t make 130 quid a cup from it.

Unless . . . . .any takers?