Mary Dhume was literally saved by the bell when she got up to answer the phone.

As Dhume, of Summerford, Ohio, picked up the receiver in the hallway, an out-of-control truck crashed through the living room where she’d just been sitting.

There was nobody on the line, she said, adding, “Maybe it was God calling to tell me to get out of my living room.”

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He really had to go – and now he really may go to jail.

Cops in Port of Sweet Grass, Mont., charged Jesse Huffman, 19, with criminal mischief for clogging a public toilet.

But the Montana State University student insists he was merely answering the call of nature in a very big way.

“I’ve never been arrested before or anything like that, and I get arrested for taking a dump,” he said.

“I didn’t think they were serious at first – I was just laughing so hard.”

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A Hong Kong company has developed a cellphone “virtual girlfriend” who whines and has tantrums when she’s not pampered.

Artificial Life Inc.’s electronic love interest is an animated figure that responds by voice to text messages you send and requires constant attention – including deliveries of virtual flowers and diamonds.

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In a scene out of an Alfred Hitchcock thriller, dive-bombing birds are attacking pedestrians in Sydney, Australia.

The aggressors are a pair of nesting currawongs, sinister black birds with long, sharp beaks, that terrorize passers-by. The male has even drawn blood from one victim, who was pecked in the back of his head.

Some folks now wear sunglasses behind their heads, hoping to confuse the attackers.

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The lions don’t sleep tonight – so neither does anybody else.

Officials say Maruk, an 8-year-old lion who lives in a zoo in the town of Industrial, Brazil, has an ingrown toenail that keeps him roaring loudly into the wee hours and keeps nearby residents up all night.

A police spokesman said, “We have received lots of complaints, but what can we do? Arrest the lion?”