Cake causes a ruckus and a tortoise wreaks havoc in this week's strangest stories.

A violent donkey has been freed from jail this week, after serving a three-day sentence for biting and kicking two men in Mexico, while an animal you wouldn't typically associate with danger is on the run.

Rupert, a 60-year-old tortoise, escaped through a hole in the fence and "has been known to bite children plus dogs and other animals", his owner Joyce Thomas told the Metro newspaper.

Though Mrs Thomas can't keep up with his speedy 4mph pace, surely someone could just flip him to halt his reign of terror?

Threats from the animal kingdom didn't just extend to amphibians this week, as a pair of car thieves were stopped in their tracks by a herd of wild boar.

Dieter Meier and Reiner Klose, 18, had abandoned the car after being pursued by police but were forced to abandon their plan to hide out in forests in the German Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania region when the herd charged them, forcing the two thieves to climb up a tree.

They called the police to rescue them eventually, having been "petrified by the boar", a police spokesman said.

"They decided arrest was better than the pigs."

Which is ironic, really.

A Midlands teenager survived a shark attack this week - from a souvenir mounted on his wall. Sam Hawthorne, 14, had been sleepwalking when he collided with the tasteless wall hanging - who has a shark on their wall? - and woke to find the creature's tooth embedded in his cheek.

He's going to need a bigger boat.

And while a Chesterfield couple claim they have the oldest dog in the world, at 29 - more than 200 in canine years - a Hertfordshire bulldog has achieved an equally impressive feat - one of the biggest ever litters, having given birth to 20 puppies, which could each fetch up to £1,000.

A Swedish woman with an inanimate object fetish - yes, they exist, apparently - claimed this week to have been married to the Berlin Wall for 29 years - with their marriage having literally crumbled in 1989 - while a Taiwanese man showed love knows no boundaries, having climbed inside a morgue freezer to be with his girlfriend's body.

Elsewhere, an Italian pensioner was hospitalised after becoming embroiled in a row over the last piece of cake at a buffet.

Niccolo Bruno, 70, grabbed the slice at an all-you-can-eat counter in Novate Milanese only for 62-year-old Alfredo Mancini to stab him.

The cake fan tried to disguise the knifing by hobbling innocently away on his walking stick but was soon apprehended by police.

The things one does for cake...

In more crime-related news, an enterprising - and handcuffed - drug suspect managed to escape custody by driving the police car away while the officers had stopped for a toilet break en route to court. Though he eventually skidded down a slope and crashed into a tree, he managed several miles of getaway.

The Malaysian police may need stronger handcuffs.

And in two final, entertainment-themed arrests, a Captain Jack Sparrow wannabe was arrested after carrying a pirate sword at Macy's in New York - he claimed it was part of his football team's uniform - while Greenpeace protestors dressed as Fred and Wilma Flintstone were arrested while approaching the European Parliament as part of a climate change protest.

Fred's feet clearly weren't moving fast enough.