Today's Special at Wal-Mart: Something Weird

From shopping carts taken for a joy ride to alligators in the parking lot, something strange is always going on at a Wal-Mart store. WSJ's Miguel Bustillo reports on the wacky, weird world of Wal-Mart.

Somewhere, something weird is going to go down this week at a Wal-Mart. And next week. And the next. (click below to read more)

Maybe a man dressed in a cow suit, crawling on all fours, will steal 26 gallons of milk from a Wal-Mart and hand them out Robin Hood-style to patrons in a parking lot, as allegedly occurred in Stafford, Va. in April.

Perhaps a glazed-eyed 20-year-old will take a truck filled with 338 boxes of Krispy Kreme doughnuts from a Wal-Mart before police find him drowsy and in possession of a bag of marijuana, as authorities say took place in Ocala, Fla., in March.

Or perchance a rapper named Mr. Ghetto will shoot an unauthorized, sexually suggestive music video paean to picking up women in the aisles of a Wal-Mart, full of ladies shaking their hindquarters in ways hindquarters typically don't shake, as happened in New Orleans in May.

"The same women that are going to be at the club are going to be at Wal-Mart," Mr. Ghetto, aka Robert Mayes, says of his video, which has been viewed more than three million times on YouTube. "Only at Wal-Mart, you don't have to spend $20 on drinks to talk to them."

There's no reason to believe that zany stuff happens per capita at Wal-Mart more than at other retail locations. Rather, it's the sheer ubiquity of the big-box titan—with some 3,750 U.S. stores visited by customers 140 million times a week—and its role as the de facto town square in many corners of the country, that keeps the company's public-relations representatives busy.

"Wal-Mart has become a microcosm of American life. So it is not uncommon to see our share of the things that happen in every town across the country," says David Tovar, a company spokesman.

A nutria

That's not to say Wal-Mart liked the gyrating in Mr. Ghetto's video: "We do not condone that kind of activity in our store environments," he quickly added.

Almost any imaginable aspect of American life can and does take place inside Wal-Mart stores, from births to marriages to deaths. Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin once officiated a wedding at the Wal-Mart in her hometown of Wasilla.

So, it seems, can any conceivable mishap. A Maryland man wound up in an emergency room with a toilet seat stuck to him after pranksters in March doused a Wal-Mart restroom with glue. Last year, an Ohio shoplifter who jumped in a garbage bin outside Wal-Mart later called 911; he was being compacted, and needed rescue.

A shopper at a Wal-Mart in Falmouth, Mass., uncovered a dental mystery two years ago when she found 10 human teeth inside a wallet for sale that was imported from Asia.

"I wanted to investigate it further but my supervisor said it wasn't worth the trip to Taiwan," says Falmouth police detective James Pires.

Animal sightings are a subspecies of Wal-Mart weirdness. The most notorious was "Norman the Nutria," a rodent that took residence inside a Wal-Mart in Abbeville, La., and spooked a female customer so badly that she says she ran over her foot with a shopping cart in 2008, breaking two bones. She sued in Louisiana state court, alleging workers had been chasing the animal for days and had given it a nickname.

"They should have been warning people," says Anthony Fontana, the attorney for alleged victim Rebecca White, who says she's racked up $58,000 in medical bills. "Those things get teeth as big as a beaver's."

Wal-Mart, which doesn't dispute the existence of the rodent, argued in its legal response that if a judge finds in favor of Ms. White, he must consider her "reacting in such a way as to startle the nutria."

It also alleges the customer erred by "failing to notice the presence of the nutria from behind the Coke rack when she should have."

Wal-Mart has even played a role in an outlaw legend: the tale of "Little Houdini," a Tennessee escape artist who is the subject of bluegrass and rap songs.

Little Houdini, whose real name is Christopher Daniel Gay, was convicted of numerous crimes last decade including stealing a Wal-Mart tractor trailer which he later said he needed to visit his sick mother, and taking country singer Crystal Gayle's tour bus and driving it to a Nascar race.

He declined a telephone interview from a Tennessee penitentiary where he is currently incarcerated, after a series of breakouts that included using a zipper to unlock his shackles in 2009, when authorities transporting him stopped for a bite at Waffle House.

"Stole a pickup in Carolina, then a Wal-Mart truck with 18 wheels/He drove toward his dyin' mama in them Cheatham County hills," goes "The Ballad of Christopher Daniel Gay" by Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Tim O'Brien.

One of the latest outbreaks of Wal-Mart weirdness took place in June in Texas. A 5-foot 2-inch shopper and mother of two named Monique Lawless, who later told a reporter she was "sick of the lawlessness," chased down three brothers after she spotted them allegedly running out of a store with stolen beer.

Her actions, which included hopping up and down on the hood of a car, led to the arrest of the brothers, named Sylvester Thompson: Sylvester Andre Thompson, Sylvester Durlentren Thompson and Sylvester Primitivo Thompson. They couldn't be reached for comment.

Ms. Lawless briefly became a televised folk hero after her hood dance was caught on surveillance cameras and aired repeatedly on cable news shows.

"If you care about your country, you can't watch a bunch of kids walk out of Wal-Mart with beer and not do anything about it," says Ms. Lawless, 42, adding that she recently autographed a Bible for an admirer at church.

"Sylvester, Sylvester and Sylvester: their families reached out" to her since the incident, Ms. Lawless says. "That meant a lot to me."