This is not a joke

By Michael J.W. Stickings

The BBC may or may not have a sense of humour, but, as far as I can tell, this is for real:

A Sudanese man has been forced to take a goat as his "wife", after he was caught having sex with the animal.

The goat's owner, Mr Alifi, said he surprised the man with his goat and took him to a council of elders.

They ordered the man, Mr Tombe, to pay a dowry of 15,000 Sudanese dinars ($50) to Mr Alifi.

Apparently Tombe "fell off the back of the goat" (use your imagination) when confronted by Alifi. So Alifi "captured and tied him up. The elders, according to Alifi, "said [he] should not take him to the police, but rather let him pay a dowry for [his] goat because he used it as his wife".

Lovely. (Poor goat. Her new "husband" is the village idiot -- or, if not, should be.)

The world is a crazy place. And some places, and some people, are crazier than others.

(Although one is reminded of the great Gene Wilder segment in Woody Allen's Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex, the one where his doctor character falls in love with an Armenian sheep. Classic.)