One day out of the year, journalists will occasionally take it upon themselves to be a little silly, strange and out of the ordinary. That day is, of course, Election Day, but they also have a lot of fun on April 1. The more notable “news events,” as documented by Buck Wolf at abcnews.com, include the BBC “spaghetti harvest” of 1957, in which new techniques of controlling the spaghetti weevil led to a bumper crop from the spaghetti trees, and a Sri Lanka newspaper’s bogus numbers game in 1989.

But such tales of strange happenings aren’t limited to April Fools’ Day, and as such, they’re 100 percent real. Usually. In a belated April Fools’ Day present, here are some stories that appeared recently. One of the stories you are about to read is a fib (but it’s short). (Five “Whose Line is it anyway?”-style points to those who get the PBS TV show reference in the previous sentence.)

The City Council of Mount Sterling, Iowa, a mile from the Missouri border, has proposed an ordinance outlawing presidential candidates’ speeches — er, lying. According to The Associated Press, “Acting Mayor Jo Hamlet said he’s tired of the exaggerating that comes with stories in the town of 40 residents famous for its hunting and fishing.”

“Plus,” Hamlet said, “I’m bored. … It’s been a long winter.”

I wonder if there are any reports about 30-point buck leaving the area in droves?

All animals should probably stay away from Athens, Ohio, where a court of appeals ruled that a man who barked back at a police dog was exercising free speech. State law forbids taunting or tormenting of police animals, and an officer testified Jeremy Gilchrist’s barking worked the dog into a frenzy.

The district court judge ruled that Gilchrist was not a threat because he was 30 feet away from the police car, and the appeals court affirmed the ruling March 26. Gilchrist’s attorney said his client was only trying to be funny, writing, “The mere fact that the police dog had commenced the barking did not entitle it to a solo performance.”

If Jeremy Gilchrist fancies himself being a dog, he can’t do anything weirder than a dog in South Africa, who reportedly gave birth to three kittens.

The story from news24.com says a dog named Vodi, who lived in a small town near Pretoria, disappeared and then returned to her owner with very different behavior.

“When she came back last Sunday, she was different,” said Vodi’s owner. “She hid from us and stopped barking. She also refused to eat.”

“On Monday my grandchildren called me and said Vodi had given birth to kittens.”

When he walked out to the barn, he saw for himself the little felines being nursed by the two-year-old canine. One neighbor blamed the birth on witchcraft. An inspector with the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals said, “We will do some tests and the results will tell us what happened.”

While dogs giving birth to kittens would be amazing, a woman in Pennsylvania is doing her best just to help frogs and salamanders conceive other frogs and salamanders (respectively) — by blocking a road during their mating rituals.

Nadine Bergeron, a resident of Warwick, said she discovered frogs crossing St. Peters Road after it rains, according to the AP. She and her friends try and slow down traffic with cones or by standing in the road to enable the happy courtship rituals to continue.

Barking humans and mating salamanders notwithstanding, the top story has to be about the time traveler arrested for insider trading. Securities and Exchange Commission investigators have arrested 44-year-old Andrew Carlssin after he went from an $800 investment to a $350 million portfolio.

During the interrogation, Carlssin confessed everything. He was from the future — 2256, to be exact — and “it was too tempting to resist” making a few bucks. “I had planned to make it look natural, you know, lose a little here and there so it doesn’t look too perfect. But I just got caught in the moment,” he said.

The article went on to say Carlssin would divulge “historical facts” such as the location of Osama bin Laden or a cure for AIDS if they would let him get, pardon the reference, back to the future. While officials are confident the story is false, one SEC source admits no one can find any records of Carlssin’s existence before December 2002.

But that’s not all, because we are assured that “Weekly World News will continue to follow this story as it unfolds.”

And if you know they will, you’re right, because I was lying about the lying ordinance.

April Fool!