Some news stories are so funny theres little to do except present them for any of our readers who havent chanced upon them. Heres one that demonstrates female Islamic dress can get even more frightening than it already is.

It seems that guards at a crossing at the Rafah terminal in southern Gaza noticed that a Moslem woman appeared, despite her veiled face and loose robe, strangely fat. They mustered the courage to approach the oddly shaped lass, despite the possibility that she might be outfitted with an unusually robust suicide belt.

Propriety being observed to a fault, lest some inadvertence lead to stoning or another alarming throwback, a female guard was entrusted to examine the woman and discovered, to her dismay, that her examinee was actually wearing a belt made up of three live crocodiles, each about 20 inches long.

The incident sparked panic at the crossing. "The policewoman screamed and ran out of the room, and then women began screaming and panicking when they heard," a spokeswoman for the European observers who run the crossing explained. When things calmed down, she said, "everybody was admiring a woman who is able to tie crocodiles to her body."

The woman, it turns out, was attempting to smuggle the reptiles out of Egypt to sell them to the small zoo in Gaza or to anybody else who might be interested in owning a pet croc.

As you might guess, in that male-dominated and sadly regressive part of the world, the woman confessed that she "was asked" to transport the crocodiles. The reptilian items would be worth "good money" in Gaza, up to about $500.

At least, the guys who trusted her with job had the foresight to tie the jaws of her cargo of crocs shut.

The errant animals were returned to the Egyptian side, no doubt much to the disappointment of the lady who was smuggling them and the men who outfitted her.