Why I Love Florida!

Hello, Alice.  Welcome to Wonderland!

If you could make up this stuff, you'd be on a par with such writers of fantasy as Paul Krugman, Rachael Maddow, Tom Teepen, and our local version of Baghdad Bob, Robyn Blumner.

Where There's a Will, There's a Won't:

One of Tampa Bay's hot button issues is the proliferation of cats.  The problem is classic catch-22:  First, they breed like rabbits.  Hillsborough County has as many as 200,000 feral and freerangers.  At their present rate of kittenbirth they'll soon be to Tampa what chickens are to Key West.  Second, no one wants to "put them down."  What to do, what to do?

Comes along outside the box thinker Ian Hallett, who suggests a program to sterilize a max of 2,000 cats a year and release them with a microchip and identifying notched ear.  That way, the cats are removed from the gene pool and saved from the big sleep.

Win, win, right?  Not so fast, Blofeld.  See, cats, being cats, kill birds, whether they're "fixed" or not.  Releasing these fowl murderers has vets, bird lovers and feline haters all upset.  So, we're left with a choice--scraping cat do-do off our shoes, or washing bird crap off our cars.  Some menu, huh?  Either way, one species or the other is gonna suffer some losses.  Ya just can't please everybody.

Planning Ahead:

If you're going to whack someone, you might want to set up a bolt-hole and plan your escape before you pull the trigger.

Accused of killing a woman at his home, 18-year-old Morris Vernell Hires III left town.  So far, so good.  But then, inexplicably, he came back.

Cops showed up at his house with a dog and began a search.  The dog found him hiding in a baby's crib, perhaps sucking his thumb.  Apparently not trained to abide stupidity, the dog bit him.

911 Is Not the Number for Home Delivery:

34-year-old Jarvis Sutton, St Petersburg, got a thirst for Kool-Aid, a hunger for burgers, and a craving for weed, all at the same time.  So he did what any pothead in such an emergency would do.  He called 911.  80 times.  In one day.

The cops arrested him and took him to jail.  Along the way he tried to satisfy his needs for sugar, grease and Maui wowie by chewing the foam attached to the metal caging in the back of the police car.  I have no clue what percentage of the RDA of nutritional sustenance is provided by foam, but I doubt it's substantive.

When Not to Toke:

The softball game ended.  The Hernando High School team made its way back to the school bus.  Alas, they did not have the machetes they would need to hack their way through the marijuana fog that permeated the vehicle.

When police attempted to have school bus driver Donna Rogers, 59, perform field sobriety tests, she "became irate, yelling and cursing," according to the report.  She was arrested on a charge of resisting arrest without violence and was jailed in lieu of $150 bail.

If you went to Vegas or Branson, you'd pay big bucks for an hour or two of yuks at a comedy venue.  Florida, on the other hand, is a comedy venue, a 24/7 SNL skit.  You just can't buy this kind of amusement anywhere else.