What would you do if you couldn’t drive and you had pets but wanted to move to an area far far away? Why you’d take a cab wouldn’t you?

That’s what Betty and Bob Matas, neither of whom drive, did when they wanted to spare their cats an airplane trip as they moved from New York to a retirement home 90 miles north of Phoenix.

They left their Queen’s New York neighborhood on April 10th in a canary yellow ford SUV cab and traveled about 10 hours a day for a flat rate of $3000 plus gas, meals and lodging. Luckily the SUV was a hybrid-electric vehicle and that lessened the cost of buying gas.

“It was pretty tiring, for my wife especially,” said Bob Matas, 72, a former audio and video engineer for advertising agencies. “We’re happy where we are. We’re happy and that’s it.”

Matas said he was “flabbergasted” by the attention surrounding the couple’s trip. Passers-by recognized them when they saw the New York cab, he said.

“Every state that we hit, people would say, ‘Are you the ones?’ and we would say, ‘Yes, we are the ones,’” Matas said.

The Mayor of Sedona welcomed them as they arrived with a noontime ceremony a couple of weeks ago. They were presented with a bag of Sedona souvenirs. Their real estate agent met them at the ceremony and gave them the keys to their new Village of Oak Creek home.

The couple stayed in a hotel for a few days while their belongings were moved into their new house. Their belongings were transported by a friend in a rental truck who drove behind the cab on the long journey.

A woman living in a small community west of New York City was startled when she looked out her kitchen window and saw a black bear looking back in at her.

“I was making a pot of coffee, and I turned around and there he was in the window looking at me,” said Lorraine Grossman.

The womans scream spooked the 211 pound bear who ran and climbed a nearby tree. He reached a height of 40 feet and wouldn’t budge. The woman found herself entertaining more than 50 neighbors who gathered in her Maplewood home to watch the bear in the tree for five hours. The bear didn’t do much more than yawn though.

“He’s really kind of cute,” said Joanne Penaluna.

State wildlife officers eventually shot the animal with a tranquilizer dart. After hanging on for about 10 minutes, the bear dropped into a net. It was taken away, tagged, then released at a state wildlife management area.

“It’s not something you get to see every day — bears falling out of trees,” said Pete Samek, whose 5-year-old daughter, Lucy Rose, watched from his shoulders.

Bears usually hibernate from December to March, though they can be easily roused, said Larry Katz, chairman of the animal sciences department at Rutgers University.

“It’s a little early for them to be waking up,” he said. “Someone or something probably walked over the area where it was hibernating.”

Authorities said the bear, a male estimated to be 2 or 3 years old, might have been snacking on birdseed and likely wandered in from the nearby South Mountain Reservation.

A recent ruling by a New York State judge might make sightings of people parachuting off of tall buildings a little more common.

Apparently, the New York Judge believes that parachuting off the Empire State Building is dangerous, but only to the jumper. He’s ruled that it’s not first degree reckless endangerment and dismissed charges against Jebb Corliss who was charged last spring when he tried to hit the silk from the 86th floor observation deck of the Empire State building.

When the judge made his ruling he said that lawyers would have to have shown that Corliss was a death risk to someone other than himself in order for the charge of reckless endangerment to hold. Corliss has been successful parachuting from a number of structures including Paris’ Eiffel Tower.

After shooting video undercover in 10 Army recruiting offices in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, ABC News released in November an episode of recruiters telling a prospect that no one is going to Iraq anymore. “No, we’re bringing people back,” he said, and his partner followed with, “We’re not at war. War ended a long time ago.”

In a separate on-camera interview, Col. Robert Manning, who is in charge of Army recruiting in the Northeast, generously told ABC News that he disagreed with the recruiters. “We are a nation and Army at war still.”