Woman finds live owl trapped inside grille of her Ford

Ah, Florida... how we love you so. After all, it almost always seems that the most unlikely, impossible and otherwise head-scratchingest stories filter up north from the Sunshine State. Take, for instance, the video you'll see below. It's not terribly uncommon for a car to come into contact with an owl; what's interesting about this story is that the owl managed to survive.

That's right, this great horned owl survived blunt-force trauma with the leading end of a fullsize, body-on-frame Expedition, and worse, it was apparently stuck inside the Ford for days. Check out the feather-brained video news report down below to see how the hooter hit head-on and came out the other side apparently no worse for the wear.

Woman finds live owl trapped inside grille of her Ford

Ah, Florida... how we love you so. After all, it almost always seems that the most unlikely, impossible and otherwise head-scratchingest stories filter up north from the Sunshine State. Take, for instance, the video you'll see below. It's not terribly uncommon for a car to come into contact with an owl; what's interesting about this story is that the owl managed to survive.

That's right, this great horned owl survived blunt-force trauma with the leading end of a fullsize, body-on-frame Expedition, and worse, it was apparently stuck inside the Ford for days. Check out the feather-brained video news report down below to see how the hooter hit head-on and came out the other side apparently no worse for the wear.

Project Ugly Horse: Part V

The Slippery Slope

I've had a healthy appreciation for cars that stop since one truly unfortunate incident with a runaway 1971 Lincoln Continental.

It's funny how quickly a party can turn from, "We're all having blast" to "What happened to the front of the house, and how many stitches do you think this is going to take?" Standing in a Mustang salvage shop in Kodak, Tennessee, I couldn't help but feel I had strayed into the latter territory with Ugly Horse. There was a supercharged 5.4-liter V8 plucked from a rear-ended Cobra sitting off to my left. The shelves were lined with second-hand Roush and SVT components galore, but I couldn't stop staring at a set of rotors with the approximate diameter of my chest.

Plucked from a 2003 Mach I, the package deal included a set of five-lug hubs, 13-inch rotors and dual-piston PBR calipers for the princely sum of $300. If you're paying attention, that figure is nearly 3/4 of what I paid for my whole Mustang. Still, I've had a healthy appreciation for cars that stop since one truly unfortunate incident with a runaway 1971 Lincoln Continental 12 years ago, and the hardware that was staring me in the face should be enough to pull the freckles from my skin should I get serious with the brake pedal in the Fox. I fished three slumbering 100 dollar bills from my wallet, laid them on the counter with a wince and walked out with a set of parts that set this project down an entirely different path.

Need to catch up on Project Ugly Horse? You can check out earlier posts here!

Hyundai plant one of 100 factories shutting down in wake of Beijing pollution scare

Many factories and chemical plants have suspended production in Beijing in an attempt to curb dangerous pollution, according to the South China Morning Post. The air pollution is some of the worst the city has seen in years, with harmful PM2.5 particle rates hovering between 200 and 400 micrograms per cubic meter. That number is down from as high as 886 on Sunday. For contrast, the US Environmental Protection Agency regulations say PM2.5 concentration at any location be no higher than 65 micrograms per cubic meter, with average maximums not to exceed 15 micrograms per cubic meter.

China blames the pollution on vehicle emissions, industrial production and an increase in domestic coal use to heat homes during cold weather. A total of 48 work sites, including construction zones, metal refineries and chemical plants have suspended production, and 41 factories have cut back production as well. That includes Hyundai Motor Beijing, which suspended production on Sunday.

Even so, the area's children's hospitals are receiving up to 10,000 patients per day with respiratory ailments. The city's government says it is in the midst of an eight-year plan to curb pollution and that levels have dropped between 30 and 70 percent over the past 14 years thanks to its actions.

NHTSA mulling adding small-overlap and angled crash tests

For the sake of safer cars, it sounds like the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration could be moving to create stricter crash tests that are similar to (and potentially even more rigorous) than what the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety recently instituted. In an interview with Automotive News, chief NHTSA administrator David Strickland said that the agency is looking into adding a new offset test as well as an angled impact test.

A small overlap test just recently became a part of the barrage of crash tests performed by IIHS where only 25-percent of the vehicle tested makes contact with a barrier, and Strickland said this is "very similar" to the test being considered by NHTSA. The government agency's current frontal crash tests, as shown above with the five-star-rated Buick Verano, consists of the car hitting a wall head-on, so it isn't clear how much overlap would be considered small for this new test. Another new scenario being investigated is called the oblique test, which involves the test subject hitting a barrier at a fixed angle rather than straight on. Neither test figures to be in use for at least the next couple years or so, but they would undoubtedly make it much harder for cars to receive a five-star crash rating.

NHTSA mulling adding small-overlap and angled crash tests

For the sake of safer cars, it sounds like the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration could be moving to create stricter crash tests that are similar to (and potentially even more rigorous) than what the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety recently instituted. In an interview with Automotive News, chief NHTSA administrator David Strickland said that the agency is looking into adding a new offset test as well as an angled impact test.

A small overlap test just recently became a part of the barrage of crash tests performed by IIHS where only 25-percent of the vehicle tested makes contact with a barrier, and Strickland said this is "very similar" to the test being considered by NHTSA. The government agency's current frontal crash tests, as shown above with the five-star-rated Buick Verano, consists of the car hitting a wall head-on, so it isn't clear how much overlap would be considered small for this new test. Another new scenario being investigated is called the oblique test, which involves the test subject hitting a barrier at a fixed angle rather than straight on. Neither test figures to be in use for at least the next couple years or so, but they would undoubtedly make it much harder for cars to receive a five-star crash rating.

Opa! Flaming cheese closes tunnel in Norway after truck fire [w/video]

Behold, the power of cheese. Flaming fromage has clogged up the Brattlitunnelen in Norway for almost a week. According to Reuters, a truck was hauling brunost, a caramelized Norwegian goat cheese, through the tunnel when the cheese somehow caught fire. Due to its high percentage of fat and sugar, the cheese can burn "almost like petrol" if it gets hot enough, and the fire-concentrating properties of the tunnel meant it took four days to put out the flames.

But there's still the toxic fumes to deal with the tunnel near the costal town of Narvik remains closed and might not reopen for another week until fondue and its odors are cleared. You can watch firefighters work to put out The Tunneling Inferno in the video below.