- Wait for the bill -

A clueless Australian couple have come up with an even madder local variation on the Hollywood movie thriller "Snakes on a Plane" -- platypus on a train.

A man in flip-flops was spotted boarding a train in Brisbane cradling the duck-billed creature under his arm, and letting passengers pet it.

Not only are the mammals highly protected, the males have stinging spurs with venom so strong it can kill a dog.

After their train escapade, the couple paraded the platypus around a shopping mall in Brisbane, Queensland.

It could end up as an extremely costly shopping trip after the man was arrested. Taking a platypus from the wild carries a fine of Aus$430,000 or US$288,000.

- Joker left drained -

One of Greece's top seismologists has been left badly shaken after his April Fool's spoof about the volcanic island of Santorini badly backfired.

Akis Tselentis, the director of Greece's Geodynamic Institute and Tsunami Center, quipped that a funnel could open up under the tourist hotspot and suck away the Aegean Sea.

But the authorities failed to see the joke and Tselentis is now under investigation.

"We live in a country where humour is persecuted," the traumatised scientist complained, holding up a sign reading "Guilty of April Fool's joke".

- Intelligence failure -

US special forces who burst into the wrong hotel room and cuffed a sleeping guest have had to make a grovelling apology.

The mess-up during a Boston training exercise with the FBI was made all the worse because it took them an hour of interrogating the poor man, a Delta Airlines pilot, in the shower to realise their mistake.

Worried guests called the police who said "upon arrival officers were met by... law enforcement agents."

- Cock has croaked -

By the time you are reading this, the cock will have crowed for the cockerel that has been depriving Kano, northern Nigeria's biggest city, of its sleep.

Magistrate Halima Wali gave its owner until Good Friday to wring its neck after its constant crowing drove neighbours mad.

Unlike the French cock Maurice, who the courts decided was within his rights to wake up weekending city slickers at dawn, there will be no reprieve for the Kano chicken. Owner Malam Yusuf is planning to serve him up for the Christian feast of Easter.

- Pure eggstasy -

Millions of children around the world will be tucking into Belgian chocolate Easter bunnies this weekend. Let's hope none will get to taste the ones the country's customers officers have just intercepted moulded from a solid lump of MDMA, the raw material for the rave drug ecstasy.

- Wedding crasher -

And finally our thoughts go out to the New York couples whose wedding days were ruined by Donald Trump becoming the first US president ever to face charges in court.

Crowds of protesters, reporters and curious tourists thronged the Manhattan street where they waited their turn to get hitched opposite the court.

"It's funny, but it's not going to ruin our day," vowed Peter Don outside the New York City Marriage Bureau.

But for Dominic Lamarco, Trump being arraigned for paying hush money to a porn star only made his big day "more joyful".

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