I’ve been mainlining Twin Peaks this week after after stumbling upon a very reasonably priced copy of the complete boxed set. That may be part of what attracted me to the following news story on Reuters, which sounds like something Special Agent Cooper could really sink his teeth into:

Goat detained over armed robbery

LAGOS (Reuters) – Police in Nigeria are holding a goat on suspicion of attempted armed robbery.

Vigilantes took the black and white beast to the police saying it was an armed robber who had used black magic to transform himself into a goat to escape arrest after trying to steal a Mazda 323.

“The group of vigilante men came to report that while they were on patrol they saw some hoodlums attempting to rob a car. They pursued them. However one of them escaped while the other turned into a goat,” Kwara state police spokesman Tunde Mohammed told Reuters by telephone.

“We cannot confirm the story, but the goat is in our custody. We cannot base our information on something mystical. It is something that has to be proved scientifically, that a human being turned into a goat,” he said.

The linchpin sentence here, of course, is “We cannot confirm the story, but the goat is in our custody.” In other words, we are not completely buying the idea that one of the thieves transformed himself into a goat to evade capture, but we are holding on to the goat just in case. This displays a laudable combination of skepticism and open-mindedness that American law enforcement would do well to emulate.

Somehow this reminds me of my other favorite news story of the week, the increasingly entertaining spectacle surrounding the increasingly bizarre Rod Blagojevich. Everywhere you turn these days, B-Rod is there — reading poetry, comparing himself to Gandhi and Mandela, holding a press conference surrounded by an army of the disabled and disadvantaged, or launching into an extended, incomprehensible metaphor involving cowboys. He’s like some freakish combination of Richard Nixon, Muhammad Ali, and Colonel Kurtz. Big ups to Blago for standing up and creating this sideshow instead of slinking off into exile with his tail between legs. (Click here to read a lengthy appreciation by San Francisco’s own Phil Bronstein.)

If he ever does get convicted of anything, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see him change into an animal to make his escape. Probably not a goat, though; maybe an otter, a fox, something like that. Or perhaps we’ll discover that he’s been possessed all this time by a “Bob”-like spirit (hidden in his hair, natch), who will abandon his host and leave behind the real Rod Blagojevich, shaken and wondering what the hell happened.