A hawk somehow made its way into the Library of Congress this week. It has now been safely captured and will be released back into the wild. Thanks, David Weinstock!

This is a non-cute shenanigan. From the press release: “Archivist of the United States David S. Ferriero announced today that Thomas Lowry, a long-time Lincoln researcher from Woodbridge, VA, confessed on January 12, 2011, to altering an Abraham Lincoln Presidential pardon that is part of the permanent records of the U.S. National Archives. The pardon was for Patrick Murphy, a Civil War soldier in the Union Army who was court-martialed for desertion. Lowry admitted to changing the date of Murphy’s pardon, written in Lincoln’s hand, from April 14, 1864, to April 14, 1865, the day John Wilkes Booth assassinated Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, DC. Having changed the year from 1864 to 1865, Lowry was then able to claim that this pardon was of significant historical relevance because it could be considered one of, if not the final official act by President Lincoln before his assassination.”

My researchers sometimes wonder why we don’t like to have pens in the reading room. Now you know one reason. (There’s also the problem of pen explosions.) Thanks, Leah Davis Witherow!

I’m sure there are many more lolcats out there with library themes, but this is the one I’m showing you. Well, okay, here are some others. Oh, all right, here are a few more. Thanks, Esau Katz!

Sarah Sloat’s blog post about the Dummhausen library (which had to close because someone stole the book) reminds me to document the library in Dav Pilkey’s Captain Underpants series. The school library contains only one book, and the librarian is Ms. Singerbrains (say it out loud).

In Captain Underpants and the Preposterous Plight of the Purple Potty People (number eight in the series), our heroes George and Harold visit an alternate reality where their school’s library is full of books, and the librarian even celebrates Banned Books Week (she’s shown holding a copy of Mommy Has Two Heathers, a play on this frequently-banned book). And that reminds me! Pilkey has other library shenanigans in his book The Dumb Bunnies, too. In that book, the dumb bunnies “bowl a home run at the public library,” where books on the shelves include The Condo that Jack Subleased, The Second to Last of the Mohicans, and Green Eggs and Tofu.

Librarians and patrons are working together on a shenanigan for a good cause at the Stony Stratford library in England. More information here. Thanks, Suzie DeGrasse!

This looks to me like the work of Hyperbole and a Half artist Allie Brosh, who brought us the Alot, but I can’t confirm that. Even BoingBoing, which links to a video version, only knows that the source is Reddit user Neonnoodle. This comic speaks to the problem of poorly attributed links to comics. Thanks, Emily Lloyd!

Many artists’ books are playful and shenaniganish, but there are a couple who seem particularly worthy of mention on Library Shenanigans. One is Brian Dettmer, whose “book autopsies” might be considered a librarian’s nightmare: he carves out the illustrations in encyclopedias, dictionaries, and other books and turns them into three-dimensional book sculptures.

Another is Zach Gage, whose ANTAGONISTIC BOOKS set (Danger and Curiosity) self-destruct in different ways; each can only be “read” once.

You can get library posters and t-shirts from Unshelved, including this divine “NEVER FORGET” with card catalog drawer. They also have “WWDD” — What Would Dewey Do, of course. Thanks, Ruth Hughes!

You’ve probably seen reproductions of Giuseppe Arcimboldo’s portraits of people composed of fruits and vegetables or other unusual materials. He painted this librarian made of books in about 1566. Thanks, John Lancaster!

Can a book save your life? Well, not really. And with a Kindle you’ll die quickly. This isn’t really a library shenanigan, just a book shenanigan. I wonder if older books, with leather covers, might have offered more resistance? Thanks, Sarah J. Sloat!