Doghouse or Courthouse?

Sometimes it pays to just come clean, even when the consequences of the first misdemeanor may end up with you sleeping on the couch.

Everyone knows that the doghouse is far better than the courthouse. Well…nearly everyone. One German cyclist is feeling the full weight of the law when he could have been facing the wrath of his wife.

The 30-year-old man from the southern German town of Schwabach is staring a court appearance and possible fine in the face after being caught lying to both the police and his wife over an alleged mugging. The man called the local cops late Wednesday night after returning home battered and bruised, claiming to have been mugged by six youths while walking home.

Cyclist admits fear of wife made him do it

"He said he beat off two of them, and that the rest fled through bushes behind the pavement," Peter Grimm, a spokesman for police said on Thursday.

Police, however, became suspicious after finding a wire fence behind the bushes and, Grimm said, the man then "admitted he had made it all up as a cover story because he was afraid of his wife."

The man, it was then revealed, had been cycling home drunk when his inebriated state led him into a crash with a lamppost. The injuries he claimed he had sustained in the fabricated mugging had actually come from his drunken collision with the street light.

The cyclist now faces charges for being drunk while in charge of a bicycle and faking a crime. Police had carried out a blood test that proved he was drunk when they first interviewed him.