Somebody should have shouted, “Hold the burger.”

A convenience-store owner in Springfield, Vt., has been charged with throwing raw hamburger in a customer’s face and then beating him with a commercial spatula.

Atta Ullo allegedly launched the attack after he ordered a waiting customer to put a magazine back in a store rack and the man tossed it at the rack instead.

Customer Justin Geiger – who tried to ward off the blows with his hands – suffered a cut tendon and bone on the middle finger of his hand.

Talk about road rage.

A red-tailed hawk collided with a Silvana, Wash., woman’s pickup truck and went on a rampage after the bird-loving motorist freed its wing from the side-view mirror.

The hawk flew inside the truck, bit the woman’s lip and then sank its talons into her right arm, refusing to let go.

“Every time you touched the bird, it gripped harder,” said the woman, who drove to a nearby gas station where firefighters and wildlife experts were called to pull the hawk off her.

The woman’s name? Julie Wing.

No more hats off to the mayor of Detroit – at least when it comes to the cops assigned to his security detail.

They were just issued a directive: Effective immediately, whenever they see Mayor Kwame Kirkpatrick exit his home or vehicle, they are to leave their patrol vehicle with their hats on and “render a hand salute.”

Those failing to comply face unspecified “disciplinary action.”

What do the cops think? “He should be grateful he’s got security,” said Marty Bandemer, head of the Detroit Police Officers Association.

If they only had brains of their own!

Some dimwitted thieves stole a box containing a human brain from a Norwegian hospital.

Two Oslo teens came upon the box on their way home from a local pub and checked to see what was inside. “We realized immediately what it was,” noted one.

The brain was later claimed by a local hospital. A spokesman there said keys had recently disappeared – followed by the theft of computers and other electronic equipment.

It’s believed the dumbfounded thieves discarded the box when they saw what was in it.

Post Wire Services