A quarter of workers admitted they come in late to work at least once a month, according to a CareerBuilder survey, which also queried employers on the most outrageous excuses from late employees. Those excuses included:

• I thought of quitting today, but then decided not to, so I came in late.
• My hair caught on fire from my blow dryer.
• I was detained by Homeland Security.
• I had to chase my cows back into the field.
• A black bear entered my carport and decided to take a nap on the hood of my car.
• My lizard had to have emergency surgery in the morning and died during surgery. I had to mourn while deciding whether to have the lizard disposed of by the vet or bring the lizard corpse with me to work.
• There was fresh powder on the hill. I had to go skiing.
• There was a store grand opening and I wanted to get the opening day sales.
• I had to finish watching “My Name is Earl.”
• All of my clothes were stolen.
• I was confused by the time change and unsure if it was “spring forward” or “fall back.”
• A Vaseline truck overturned on the highway and cars were slipping left and right.

Aside from the outrageous excuses, the usual suspects are to blame for why employees are late to work: traffic, 53%; oversleeping, 33%; bad weather, 28%; lack of sleep, 23%; and needing to get kids to daycare or school, 15%.

The nationwide survey included than 2,500 hiring and human resource managers and more than 3,200 workers across industries. Harris Poll conducted the online survey from Nov. 4 to Dec. 1, 2015.