Amid a global pandemic, humanitarian crises, natural disasters and other bleak news, lighthearted stories are as necessary as ever. Here is a pick of the week's best funny, silly, strange and quirky news from around the world.

Let the feathers fly!

Pillow fighting is going professional. A first Pillow Fight Championship (PFC) is due to be held in late January in Florida. And it's not for the faint-hearted.

"It's not something where you sit there and laugh and feathers are flying," PFC CEO Steve Williams told Reuters. "It's serious. It's hardcore swinging with specialized pillows."

Many of the competitors who will take part in the January 29 event will be boxers and mixed martial arts (MMA) fighters who usually engage in much more violent combat, but the difference is that at the PFC nobody will get hurt, said Williams.

"There's a lot of people who don't want to see the blood. They want to see good competition, they just don't want to see the violence."

And since most people have swung a pillow at a sibling or a friend as a child, Williams thinks this new sport can have widespread appeal.

Reason enough to get into a pillow fight again: it counts as exercise!

Chickening out

A traditional Indian wedding procession proved too much for a flock of poultry over the weekend. 

According to farmer Ranjit Kumar Parida, the fireworks, music, dancing and flashy clothes caused 63 of his chickens to keel over and die.

Parida told AFP that the wedding procession passed by his poultry farm in Odisha state shortly before midnight on Sunday, blasting "ear-splitting noise."

"I asked the band operators to lower the volume as the music was too noisy and terrifying the chickens. But they did not listen and the groom's friends shouted at me," he said.

A vet later confirmed to Parida that his chickens had suffered heart attacks.

Zoology professor Suryakanta Mishra told the Hindustan Times that loud noise can cause sudden excitement and stress and increases the risk of cardiovascular disease in birds. 

Parida initially filed a complaint for compensation from the wedding organizers but the matter is now being resolved amicably, police said.

Plowy McPlowFace & friends

As northern parts of the U.S. brace for another harsh winter, the state of Vermont has at least crossed one important task off its list: naming the snowplows that will hit the roads over the coming months to clear the mounds of snow.

For extra creativity, the state's department of transportation got school children to take part in a Name a Plow contest.

The results ranged from "creative and clever, to cute and silly," the agency said.

There are winter-themed names (Blizzard Wizard, Icebreaker, and Frosty the Snowplow) and formidable monikers (Snowcrusher, Plow-A-Tron 6,000, and Get Out of My Way!). 

There are pop culture references (Jennifer Snowpez, Captain Snowmerica, and Snowbusters) and a surprising number of Star-Wars-inspired names (Luke Snow Walker, Darth Blader, and Snowbegone Kenobi). 

Wordplay was also popular (Snow Place Like Home, Sweeping Beauty, and Brr-rito), and then there are just random names (Steve, Carl, Dorito and Hot Cocoa). 

The full list can be viewed here.

As thanks for their contribution, each school got a visit from "its" snowplow, according to AP. 

Naming snowplows has become something of a trend: earlier this year, Scotland's creatively named fleet proved an international hit.

If pigs could fly

Amsterdam's busy Schiphol airport has found an inventive way to avert incidents with birds: by recruiting a herd of pigs.

The animals have been brought in as part of a six-week pilot project to see if they can help drive away geese and their other winged friends, according to The Guardian. 

It is not just the pigs' hulking presence that acts as a deterrent, but also the fact that they eat discarded sugar beets on nearby farmland that usually attract the birds. With the beets gone, the birds stay away, said the pigs' owner, Stan Gloudemans.

Schiphol airport reported 259 bird strikes last year, even though air traffic was down due to the pandemic. In 2018-2019, the number was 565.

If birds fly into a plane's engines, this can lead to disaster, and airports routinely deploy lasers and noise to keep them away. Recruiting pigs is a new solution and so far it seems to be working.

"This is a trial with two hectares... I'd dare to say that it's already a success; next year, on to bigger fields!," Gloudemans predicted.

Read more: 

ICYMI: The week's quirky news from around the world - November 19, 2021

ICYMI: The week's quirky news from around the world - September 30, 2021