One of the perks of being an REI co-op member is the store’s generous return policy. If you don’t like a water bottle, or a jacket, or a pair of hiking boots, you have 365 days to bring it back—or at least most of you do. The retailer recently sent notice out to a small fraction of its members (less than 0.02 percent) who, REI says, abused the company’s generosity, returning the vast majority of their purchases, often after having used them. The message? No more returns for you. 

Lord Byron, a Capitol Hill cat who became internet famous after its owners created a website where residents could document seeing him around the neighborhood, has died. He was a beloved cat who, boasting an AirTag tracker on his collar as he wandered his domain, endeared himself to locals, often hung out in random businesses, and accrued thousands of admirers on Facebook. May he rest in peace. 

An outbuilding in rural North Carolina. An old parachute that fits the description. A family with decades of suspicion. Could these be the clues that finally lead investigators to confirm the identity of iconic hijacker D. B. Cooper? The children of Richard Floyd McCoy II believe so, and claim their late father, who pulled off a similar heist in Utah five months after Cooper jumped out of that plane in 1971, was the man America has spent decades looking for. Of course, the FBI doesn’t seem think so.…

We’re used to hearing about grocery chains and telecom companies merging—not institutions of higher learning. But that’s exactly what’s happening as Cornish College of the Arts and Seattle University announced a plan to meld into a single institution. The smushing together comes at a time when private universities across the country are struggling with low enrollment and financial duress. This is probably a better fit than, say, Bastyr and Seattle Pacific Universities would be, but still weird.

The avian flu has our national egg supply dwindling and even has local thieves thinking outside the, um, shell. Two miscreants in a white van broke into West 
Seattle’s Luna Park Cafe and made off with more than 500 eggs, plus additional ingredients from the restaurant’s walk-in. Owner Heong Park told Fox 13 that he was able to interrupt the heist after he got a call from a landlord and still open for breakfast that day after desperately sourcing replacement eggs. 

Even free speech has a price. The parcel of land in Lewis County that includes the infamous Uncle Sam sign known for its provocative conservative messages along I-5 has been listed for $2.5 million. The sign currently reads “How many Americans will we leave behind in Ukraine” to southbound drivers and “No one died in WW2 so you could show papers to buy food” to northbound drivers. Maybe the next owner can use the billboard to promote the Cascadian independence movement. 

Elsewhere along I-5, after more than a year WSDOT crews finally removed a giant stuffed sloth that had been perched on a tree overlooking the interstate near Lake Samish. The sloth had become a subject of fascination to Reddit users in Bellingham, who dubbed him Slothy. “Slothy DOES remind us that it’s important to slow down,” WSDOT wrote on Facebook. But the agency said he also caused a dangerous distraction to drivers. No word on where the eight-foot mammal is living now. 

Jeopardy! host (and Seattleite) Ken Jennings got to remind America about the proper spelling of one of our local landmarks when a contestant wrongly answered “What is Pike’s Place Market?” on the game show. “We are sticklers in Seattle—it’s Pike Place. No s,” Jennings said, docking the contestant $1,000. Good thing there weren’t any clues about Nordstrom’s.

Forget hydroplanes—what about hydrofoils? According to The Seattle Times, multiple ventures are underway that would revive Seattle’s old mosquito fleet for a new generation. Kitsap Transit is developing its own electric foil ferry program for regional passengers. And Northern Ireland–based Artemis Technologies is already testing out an electric ferry that rides above the water, making for smoother passage around the Puget Sound.

It’s bad enough when a semitruck crashes, causing damage and backups even when nobody gets hurt. But it especially stings when that semitruck is transporting 70,000 pounds of pollinator hives and honeybees. Yet that’s exactly what happened near Bellingham, allowing 14 million bees to escape and prompting a frantic effort by local sheriff’s deputies and master beekeepers to reunite as many as possible with their queens.

It feels like Amazon is everywhere these days. You can’t walk down the street without bumping into a Rivian van filled with individually packaged consumer goods. Or surf the web without landing on a site hosted by Amazon Web Services. Or cross the street in South Lake Union without hearing Jeff Bezos talking to you through a crosswalk button. Wait, what? Yep. Several crosswalk buttons in town were hacked to play a message from a voice sounding suspiciously like Bezos’s imploring pedestrians with a message that may be near to his heart: “Please don’t tax the rich.”

An osprey in British Columbia dropped a fish it had caught onto a power line, starting a small wildfire in the town of Ashcroft. Locals might remember that a similar incident closer to home in 2016 caused a power outage in South Seattle. Or more recently, the time this summer when a salmon fell from the sky and landed in T-Mobile Park, nearly hitting a camera operator. 

You know what was more likely to hit you in the head at a Mariners game this year? A Cal Raleigh home run ball. You probably didn’t miss this, but it’s worth repeating anyway because it’s as mind-boggling as any news to come out of Seattle in a long time. The man known as the Big Dumper hit a historic 60 home runs in the 2025 regular season—28 of them at T-Mobile. 

More than 12,000 bottles of whiskey were stolen from Westland Distillery’s Burlington warehouse, the company told The Seattle Times. A truck driver pulled into the loading dock, presented paperwork that had been provided by a freight carrier contracted with Westland, then disappeared. Skagit County sheriff’s deputies are investigating, but as of press time the search for the missing whiskey is on the rocks. 

A driver fleeing police in Eastlake found a unique means of escape: The evader rammed through a barricade and jumped a stolen car over an open span in the University Bridge, which was at the time lowering back into position after having opened for a boat. The action-movie stunt worked. The car was found abandoned nearby with significant damage, but the driver has yet to be located. Maybe they’re off drinking Westland whiskey somewhere.