Top Ten things you don't know about Iraq...

10. Iraqi Sheep Ride Shotgun.

With their economy largely in shambles, many Iraqis raise livestock (chiefly sheep and goats) for food and profit. Big-time shepherds and goatherds transport their animals in large open-bed pick-up, but your average Iraqi dabbling in animal husbandry can’t afford a truck just to haul two or three sheep to market once a month. So, like all good Iraqis, he makes do. It’s not uncommon to see an Iraqi man driving a compact car with his wife and kids in the back seat and, in the passenger’s seat, a fat, woolly sheep being chauffeured to the market for slaughter.

Iraqis also routinely transport live animals in the trunks of their cars. In early 2006, at a checkpoint outside the central city of Balad, U.S. and Iraqi troops stopped a nervous Iraqi driver. While U.S. soldiers stood back and supervised, the Iraqi troops searched the man. Expecting to find a bomb or contraband weapons, they popped the trunk and discovered why the driver as so apprehensive. Crammed in the trunk next to the spare tire were a sleepy full-grown goat and a wriggling two-month-old puppy. The Iraqi soldiers rolled their eyes; the Americans doubled over in laughter; the driver, embarrassed, just shrugged.

The whole list here.

[via Neatorama]