- "Hi meerkat neighbor! I hope we can be friends."
Capitol Hill residents now have a firmer date for the re-opening of the Olive Way interstate exit: "Sometime after May 17."
Over in the U-District, UW president Mark Emmert is leaving after five years for a new job at the NCAA. Also, a participant in UW's Engineering Discovery Day program turned out to be infected with chickenpox, so anyone who hung out at the HUB or the engineering building on April 23 might want to get vaccinated.
There is no vaccination against the cuteness of adorable meerkats, who make their debut at the Woodland Park Zoo on Saturday. Meanwhile, two totally un-adorable Aurora Avenue motels will be sold or leased for use as low-income housing within four months as the result of a plea agreement between the city and the motel owners, who were accused of criminal tax violations.
In continuing adventures up north, a 75-pound mosaic artwork of a whale's eye was stolen from the Magnuson Park Children’s Garden by someone with the foresight to bring a saws-all tool to remove it from its re-bar-and-concrete home. Also being stolen: outgoing mail in Fremont. And a man suspected of being the "Grim Reaper Bandit" who robbed the U-Village Key Bank last week was arrested while sleeping in a car behind the Roosevelt Way QFC.
Back on Capitol Hill, police have arrested a man accused of being one of the neighborhood's most prolific car thieves; surveillance footage of him allegedly using a stolen credit card to buy food at the Madison McDonald's reportedly helped nail him. In sadder McDonald's news, a 67-year-old man was killed in the Ballard McDonald's parking lot Monday as a woman backed out of her parking space; the death was ruled accidental and the driver was not charged with a crime.
Over on Queen Anne, a man allegedly set fire to the "Ride the Ducks" building and afterward told the police a strange story about his motivation for the arson. In other aquatic vessel news, a submarine has been spotted (and photographed!) off the Alki coast; invent your conspiracy theories now!
