Source: China Daily
In a bid to prevent suicidal dives from a 1,000 foot bridge in southeast China, officials have had the entire span slathered in butter. The idea is that by covering the bridge's various substructures in such a slick, fatty substance, it would be nearly impossible for potential corpses to ascend to a dangerous height. A government spokesperson explain the decision with the words:
So far reports have been coming in that the plan is working, although no real numbers have been published. One bridge operator had this to say about the slippery situation (I had to):"We tried employing guards at both ends but that didn't work - and we put up special fences and notices asking people not to commit suicide here. None of it worked - and so now we have put butter over the bridge and it has worked very well. Nobody can get up there and nobody who tries ever falls."
"The butter makes the bars and frames slippery and hard to climb on to, and we can easily catch them. Each time somebody threatens to commit suicide to get media attention or sympathy over personal problems we end up with several hours of tailbacks and there were lots of complaints. Since we put up the butter there have been no problems with these attention seekers."
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