Dog Days in the News

Today, I enjoyed the calm before the finals grading storm. At lunchtime, I sat down with the remains of my baked potato soup (yum!!) and read the local paper. Not the quick breeze through that I've been reduced to lately, but a leisurely perusal of all the news local and otherwise. Ahhh.

Lots of animals in the news today. The Blotter reporter caught up with two stellar canines in the local police department. Seems the other night, police pulled over a fellow driving without taillights. As they discussed the lack of lights in the fellow's tail section, one police officer smelled the unmistakable "odor of burned marijuana." Ganja. Wacky weed.

So, "while the officer wrote a citation for the broken lights" the fellow said to the other officer, "Sure, your drug-sniffing dog can smell my car." Word to the wise: If you've been smoking marijuana in your car, you may not be the best judge of whether a drug-sniffing dog should smell your car. As you'd expect, the dog found 15 bags of Mary Jane in the fellow's car, and the fellow was taken to jail. If I had to guess, I'd say that the fellow probably said, "Dude" more than once.

In a separate but related story, police stopped a young woman because she was driving with an obscured tag. The officer "asked if he could search the car when he smelled burned marijuana." Another word to the wise: Don't smoke marijuana in your car. The police in this college town are very familiar with the smell and will notice if it is wafting from your vehicle. Dog or no dog.

So, "the officer brought his drug-sniffing dog to the car, and dog confirmed that marijuana was likely inside." Here's the question: How could the dog confirm that the weed was "likely" inside? Did the dog say, "Well, I can't say with complete certainty, but based on my initial findings, I believe there's a strong likelihood that this car is toting the ganja." Or maybe the officer said, "Well, boy, are there drugs?" And the dog just shrugged. Either way, the young lady joined the previous fellow in jail.

Let this be a lesson to you: If you come to this college town, make sure that your car is in good working order, particularly if you plan to haul some drugs around. Alternately, carry around some fresh meat, just to throw off the drug-sniffing dogs and police officers.

In other dog and cat news, seems a local vet rescue operation is looking for someone with a horse trailer and some extra time. The vet rescue had access to a horse trailer but the owner doesn't want to help them anymore. Why? Maybe it has something to do with why the vet rescue wants the trailer. Seems they want to transport 60 dogs and 24 cats to Stamford, Connecticut for "an SPCA-sponsored adopt-a-thon."

Gotta say that if I had a horse trailer, I'd really have to think about loaning it out to transport 84 dogs and cats to New England. I assume the animals will be contained somehow, but who knows? Maybe they'll be roaming free in the horse trailer. It will be the end of the world as we know it - dogs and cats sleeping together. Woe be unto the person who has to clean out the trailer when it finally returns to the Peach State.

The vet rescue claims to have "a vehicle and experienced drivers" to make the trip. Really? If you've experienced transporting 84 dogs and cats to New England, why in God's name would you ever do it again?

One last point: Are we really so sorry in this state that we have to transport our stray animals to New England in a horse trailer so that they can find good homes? Seriously.

In the News

As you know, I love the Blotter in my local paper. Sure, I feel for victims of car crashes, accidental injuries, and violent crime. I also have some sympathy for the folks who go away on vacation and return to find their air conditioners gone. Or the poor college students who discover that their roommates didn't guard their possessions over the long summer break, and now they have to buy a new laptop, iPod, and Wii, because what college student can survive without all three of those things?

No, the reason I love the blotter is because of entries like the following from the past week:

You know it's going to be good when the headline reads, "Madison reports strange arrest." It all started when a Madison County woman (not Meryl Streep) reported that someone in a truck dropped an object on to her windshield and broke it. A diligent sheriff's deputy (not Don Knotts) surveyed the damage and the crime scene and came to a conclusion. Calling on his finely honed detecting skills and extensive knowledge of all of the county's truck drivers (quite a feat for someone in a rural county), he stopped in to see a man who drove a truck matching the description of the windshield breaker.

When the deputy arrived, he immediately became suspicious. According to the report, "he found the 31 year old man with a syringe jutting from his pocket and wires dragging on the ground from inside his pants." Upon further investigation, the deputy learned that the syringe contained meth residue, which goes a long way toward explaining the rest of the story. According to the report, "the wires led to a battery that made [a] homemade contraption vibrate in his pants." Seems the fellow "placed a small motor inside a pill bottle and then wrapped the bottle in pipe insulation." Then, we assume, he put the contraption where the sun doesn't shine and plugged himself in.

We can cut the fellow some slack, because what man doesn't want something that vibrates in his pants? You've really got to hand it to this guy, so to speak. I mean, seriously, he could have gotten a cell phone, set it to vibrate, and constantly called himself. Or, he could get one of those contraptions, what's it called? You know, those things that vibrate. I think they're called vibrators.

But no, this genius looked around his house and asked himself, "WWMacD"? (What Would MacGyver Do?) In response, he decided to build a better vibrator, one that risked lighting up his "little buddy" with several volts of electrical current. I think we can agree that in this fellow's case, fertility problems might not be the worst outcome. I have to say that I'm a little disappointed that he didn't use a paper clip and chewing gum. MacGyver would have. But then, MacGyver wasn't hyped up on meth, or at least we don't think he was. Probably best not to consider what the fellow might have done with the chewing gum.

According to the Blotter entry, the fellow is in jail on multiple charges that don't include "possession of a strange vibrating contraption." There's no mention of what became of his contraption. I imagine it's quite the conversation piece in the evidence room.

As if that wasn't enough entertainment, in yesterday's paper, there's a story of a woman who flagged down a police officer. It was 5AM and she wanted a ride to Odd Street. You just can't make this stuff up. The officer agreed to take her to her destination so she happily climbed into the car. That was her first mistake.

Seems she forgot that police cars are equipped with computers that retrieve information. On their way to Odd Street, the officer learned the woman's name, her real name - her second mistake. Using his trusty computer, the officer learned that the woman was wanted in a neighboring county. D'oh!

Seems she also forgot that police cars are equipped with other neat gadgets, like radios. She also forgot that police cars can go lots of places, not just Odd Street. Imagine her disappointment when she didn't arrive at Odd Street. Instead, the officer "gave her a ride to the county line where a sheriff's deputy picked her up and took her to the county jail." So, let this be a lesson to you - if you're wanted by the police, it's best to stay out of their cars. Find another way to Odd Street.

In case you're wondering, these geniuses are not in the same jail. It's probably best because there's no telling what might happen if they were allowed to combine their mental acumen.

Mr. Potato Nose

According to today's blotter, "Pitched potato knocks out husband." Here's the story: In the wee hours on Thanksgiving morning, sheriff's deputies in a nearby town responded to a call from a 43 year-old woman. We're not sure what she told them, but when they arrived, they found her husband unconscious with a knot on his nose, a potato laying nearby.

As the husband came to, he and his wife recounted their evening, to the best of their combined ability. According to the couple, they got into a tussle around 1AM, after "they had been drinking," smashed, as it were. We don't know what they were arguing about, but perhaps they engaged in the age-old pre-Thanksgiving "Irish potato" or "sweet potato" debate. The argument boiled over when the husband "used an expletive" to describe his wife. At that point, she grabbed a trusty potato and hurled it at him, "hitting him in the nose and causing him to pass out." Say what you want about this woman, she's got an arm and great aim, even when smashed. She immediately called 911, sure she'd just committed homicide by spud.

When the deputies arrived, the wife told them "that she didn't mean to hit her husband." She just meant to scare him, really. The husband didn't press charges and the woman was not arrested or booked on assault with a deadly spud charges. If you ask me, the whole story sounds twice-baked. Just remember, potatoes don't knock people unconscious, people knock people unconscious. I hear the couple has agreed to let the wife make any potato-related decisions from now on.

Lotion commotion

Today's blotter carries the most creative response to the drought: Door-to-door lotion sales. I'll let you absorb that before I go on.

As the pioneering lotioneer was negotiating a sale, some other fellow "beat him up and stole his lotion." The salesman flagged down a police officer, who went to find additional witnesses to the great lotion commotion. When the officer returned, the victim had slipped away.

The lotion thief, "Hamp," is homeless and has a scraped knee and cheek. The blotter writer wants us all to know, "The lotion was valued at $5 and 'smells good,' according to police." As opposed to the "hot" lotion that's more expensive and stinks. Police have issued an all-points bulletin for "Homeless man with really soft fragrant skin trying to move a large supply of lotion."

Word has it that the lotion salesman is really chapped about the whole thing, though his friends are telling him that he needs to have a thick skin.

Blotter

One of my favorite activities is reading the local paper. I don't mind admitting that the local paper is one of the main reasons why I moved back here. I love the local paper, especially the Blotter and the Editorial Page. There, amidst the news of the day, you're sure to find a little nugget, a little snippet so unexpected that you'll have to read it twice, maybe three times.

For example, in today's blotter, police responded to a burglary in progress at a house under renovation near the university. When police got there, they easily found 3 students hiding inside. Apparently, the students were not very good at hiding. Maybe they were hindered by the fact that they'd been drinking and it was 3AM. As police hauled them out of their "hiding" places, the students assured police that they weren't burglarizing the house. No, they were just curious about the renovation. That's right, of all the possible explanations for their behavior, these geniuses went with "curious about the renovation." They were so curious that they decided to down a few cold ones and go check it out - at 3AM. Our crack police force didn't fall for it and charged them with prowling and loitering.

But, in what easily qualifies as my favorite blotter entry of all time, police stopped a 21 year old man because he was driving erratically at 2AM. The man, "whose breath smelled of alcohol," offered the officers $800 to let him go immediately. The officers declined and arrested him instead. As they drove him to the police station, "the officer saw the man reaching into the back of his pants and putting something into his mouth." Naturally, the officer asked what the man was doing. And here's his response, exactly as reported in the blotter. "The man said he was eating feces to foil a DUI breath test." Turns out, police found residue of a pill in the man's mouth.

While the story is easily strong enough to stand on its own, I know there's a punchline in there somewhere. So far, I've come up with, "Gee, I've heard of shit for brains, but never heard of shit for breath." Or, "That's certainly a new twist on 'potty mouth.'" Or, "Guess he was just talking shit."

I don't know who writes the Blotter, but they're not paying him or her nearly enough.