People With Too Much Time on Their Hands | Recurring Themes

• Producers and sellers of senbei, a type of rice cracker, joined together in Soka, Japan, on Oct. 3 to break the Guinness World Record for ... wait for it ... creating the largest rice cracker mosaic. About 200 people constructed a rendering of Leonardo da Vinci's "Mona Lisa" using seven different colors of rice cracker. The mosaic, according to United Press International, measured 1,250 square feet and required more than 23,000 crackers. [UPI, 10/4/2018]

• Frontier Airlines removed a passenger before takeoff from a flight from Orlando, Florida, to Cleveland on Oct. 9 because of her non-allowed "emotional support animal," a squirrel. Passengers were alerted to a "situation" and told they needed to exit the airplane, according to 24-year-old flyer Brandon Nixon of Ashland, Ohio.

"You expect the worst when they say something like that," Nixon told the Associated Press. When he asked a flight attendant for more information, "All she said was 'a squirrel.'" Police were called when the woman and her squirrel refused to deplane, and she was escorted through the terminal, pumping her fist in the air as she held the squirrel on her lap. [Associated Press, 10/10/2018]