Florida News Part 2

Continued from last time…

Kids Say the Darnedest Things

An Alaska Airlines plane was isolated at Orlando Airport after a 10-year-old lad with an iPhone radioed the plane had been hijacked. Fun fact: The minimum age for federal crimes that usually apply to planes is 11.

Lavender Lights

Mood lighting has come to Central Florida streets. For reasons authorities don’t understand, more than 600 malfunctioning LED lights have turned purple from their original white. Locals are now asking for disco balls and dance music.

Another Day, Another Gator

Social media marveled at a bicyclist calmly waiting for an alligator to cross the road. A person remarked that the cyclist must be local. Unfortunately the Bureau of Tourism appears to have removed the video, perhaps from fear of scaring away visitors. If gators are going about their business and you stay out of their way, they’ll leave you alone. Last year a bike rider was bitten– he’d fallen off his bike and landed virtually on top of the startled reptile.

And Yet Another

Alligators up to four, less than five feet (~1⅓m) are manageable, but after that, a human is outclassed in mass and strength. Imagine an 11-footer (more than 3⅓ metres) in your swimming pool. Nuh-uh, that’s a bit much even for me, especially during mating season. And crocodiles… Yiii! I avoid.

And Another

My friend Thrush sent me this item. B-b-b-bed? Seriously? Look, when raised young, they can make good, clean, quiet, protective pets, not a girlfriend. One of those arguments, “Brr. Your feet are freezing,” might not turn out so well.

And Another

The headline, ‘Florida man dies while searching for frisbees in a gator-infested lake,’ might sound of levity, but the story is sad to the extreme. We're talking pricey frisbee golf discs, and homeless men wade in lakes, hoping to retrieve enough to sell for food.

Bearly Here

Bad enough Floridians find alligators lazing in their swimming pools, but some, like my friend Thrush, put up with bears. Given a choice, I’d rather deal with a gator than a bear as this video demonstrates.

Bearly There

What‽ I have no idea how to caption this: grocery store, pitchfork, whip, stabbing an SUV… Additional information made it worse. How do you link teddy bears to pitchforks and whips?

Hog Haven

And if wild bear isn’t enough, what about wild boar? The retirement community of Sun City is supposed to offer drama-free living, but feral swine have settled in.

Homicidal Sand Dunes

If you’ve managed to avoid alligators, wild boars and bears, watch out for murderous sands. The strange fact is that lovely sand can be dangerous, even deadly, and the lethal physics of wet sand, dry sand, and dunes are all different and life-threatening in different ways. Dry sand might be the worst because you will almost certainly require outside assistance. Here are survival tips.

Another Reptile

A jewelry store owner averts a multi-million dollar diamond theft by locking the would-be perpetrator in the vault.

Hot Pursuit

Motorcycles in Florida… it’s a thing in a state where Bike Week lasts three hundred and sixty days. Osceola reportedly receives a complaint bikers are harassing motorists and waving pistols at them. Deputies follow a random rider who appears oblivious to the drama and pulls into a Kissimmee service station. They guy uncorks his tank, starts pumping fuel, and wham!

A deputy tases him. The ‘suspect’ erupts in a fireball ‘cooking him alive.’

Gasoline → fumes → spark → explosive, right?

The taser-happy deputy may have been denser than the oak of a nightstick, but he wasn’t trying to kill the guy. The victim suffered devastating burns over more than three-quarters of his body and survival is still touch-and-go. But here we have a problem.

After ages of no apparent reaction and refusals to bring in FDLE (Florida’s state police), the sheriff announced he’s charging the victim with four counts despite no evidence he was associated with marauding bikers and casually took time to top off his tank. No gun was found on or around the victim, nor anywhere on gas station premises. At this point, locals express doubt the victim was involved with an crime, suggesting Osceola County might be trying to forestall a liability lawsuit. Police should have considerable video coverage from air and road, but the Sheriff's Department is not responding to FOIA requests nor releasing video.

Senator Rick Scott

What Did You Expect?

The Republican Senate Campaign fund is missing tens of millions of dollars– perhaps a couple of hundred million– including tens of thousands for private air charters buried in a Waffle House line item. Only one man knows for sure and he’s on a yacht elsewhere. Florida’s Rick Scott who masterminded the largest Medicare/Medicaid fraud in history. His fine alone was $1.7-billion, that’s Billion with a B. So when the GOP wanted a financial genius to care for precious donations, who did they put in charge? Wait, you peeked!

Twerking While Intoxicated

An arrest warrant was issued for a woman who invaded a McDonald’s, partially trashed the place, and then, er, twerked upon exiting. Fortunately we do not have video.

Driving While Distracted

A couple crashed into a FedEx truck whilst engaged in an, uh, moving violations. (So many possible puns.) I cannot improve upon the observation of the Yahoo reporter: “The only package harmed was the one being attentively gift-wrapped by the passenger of the SUV.”