No duh: Florida is America's bizarre news capital

This will hardly come as news to loyal readers of this blog, but a Web site has concluded that Florida is the bizarre news capital of America. And Tampa is tops among Florida cities.

Tableseed.com which helps restaurants e-mail customers, analyzed 2,000 Associated Press “strange news” stories published during the past year. It counted the number of stories in each state and city. Then the number was adjusted for population.

The end result: Florida’s the strangest, followed by New Hampshire and Alaska.

Tampa’s the strangest among Florida cities, ranking No. 20. New York City was ranked the strangest nationwide.

Here are some of the stories the study mentioned as examples, all of which have appeared on BizarreFlorida.com:

• “Man calls 911 after eatery runs out of lemonade” — Boyton Beach, FL

• “Dead shark left in Miami street after failed sale” — Miami, FL

• “Man allegedly flings jellyfish at teens at beach” – Madeira Beach, FL

Neighbors side with bear, not shooter

   A mama bear was shot in Shalimar last week, and the people who had grown used to it weren’t pleased, nwfdailynews.com reports.

   “The bear that was shot this morning in Shalimar was completely harmless,” Rachel Akers said in an e-mail. “The momma bear and the cubs lived here on Eglin by the Tricare office in which I work. For two weeks they would climb the tree outside our office and sleep and eat acorns. Never once did they ever try to charge us or threaten us in any way. We were four feet away at times.”

   David Jay, who shot the bear in his yard, told officers he was afraid the animal would charge him.

   Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission spokesman Stan Kirkland said the orphaned cubs, which are 9 to 10 months old, “should be plenty old and wise enough to live on their own.”

Runaway monkey crosses county line into Oldsmar

The runaway monkey's on the move again, this time at an Oldsmar apartment complex, officials said this afternoon.

The 30-pound runaway monkey, likely a macaque, was seen swinging from treetops to rooftops at the Sabal Palm at Boot Ranch Apartments near 1355 Bay Harbor Drive, according to the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office. Deputies said it can be aggressive and asked that residents report any new sightings.

Deputies can't confirm yet that it's the same monkey-on-the-lam last seen Friday in northwest Hillsborough County. But a map of four separate monkey sightings across Tampa Bay in the last two weeks shows a similar path headed diagonally to the Gulf of Mexico.

"It wouldn't surprise me if it was the same one, and in fact I suspect it would be. Those animals can get around pretty fast," said Gary Morse, spokesman of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. "How many monkeys have you seen in Pinellas and Hillsborough counties?"

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From Tampabay.com

Where are those 18,000 buildings?

   The state is having trouble locating 18,000 buildings that it owns across Florida, according to South Florida's cbs4.com.

   When the Legislature told Management Services Secretary Linda South to locate surplus state-owned property that could be sold, nobody expected it to be a daunting task. But apparently there is no list of all state-owned property. (The Management Services Department is responsible for about 115 state buildings, and we take some comfort in that fact that it knows where they are.)

   South told a legislative committee that the department so far has gotten information on about 18,000 buildings but does not know where they all are, what they are used for, what they are worth, or even if they still exist.

   South said her agency will need help locating the buildings, then determining what they’re worth. She wants to outsource the job.

BB gun brings university lockdown

   The University of Miami was locked down for about a hour Friday afternoon because of people cruising the campus firing a BB gun, the Miami Herald reports.

   The campus reopened at 3:37 p.m. when police apprehended four people.

   Nobody was hurt, and there apparently was no panic on campus, though reporters found students who wondered why the campus would close over a seemingly minor incident. “I’m sure it was nothing major, if it was a BB gun,” one said.

Break-in at Pasco clubhouse solved cold turkey

HOLIDAY — In her robe and slippers, Delores Kietzer surveyed the damage.

It was 11 o'clock Wednesday night and the North Buena Vista Civic Association's clubhouse had been broken into. Kietzer, 74, is the president.

A neighbor saw three men slip out the back door and yelled for them to stop. The men ran. The witness called the Pasco County Sheriff's Office, whose investigators were now dusting the cupboards and bingo closet for fingerprints.

The thieves broke the closet door and made a mess of the place. They stole a DVD player and three packages of hot dogs, which were bought for the club's Friday night social. The thieves left the buns.

"Isn't that something," Kietzer said.

A deputy asked her:

"Do you by any chance have turkeys here?"

"Well, yes we do," Kietzer said. "We have four."

She had bought them that evening at Sweetbay, which was having a sale — 49 cents a pound. Each turkey was about 16 pounds. Every year the clubhouse feeds 40 to 80 people for Thanksgiving. The club serves turkey, potatoes and gravy, and everyone else brings a side dish.

Kietzer took the deputy to the freezer. They opened the door.

There were only three inside.

"As soon as they found out we had a missing turkey, they knew they had him," Kietzer said.

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Read the rest of the story @ Tampabay.com.

Two more monkey sightings reported in Hillsborough

TAMPA — Two monkey sightings were reported Friday morning in northwest Hillsborough a couple of hours apart.

It's not clear if the same monkey was seen twice or if this is the same monkey that eluded officials last week, said Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office spokeswoman Vida Morgan.

The first sighting was at 13444 Bellingham Drive at 7:50 a.m., Morgan said. A resident told Sheriff's Office dispatchers that a monkey was sitting on his back porch.

About 10:15 a.m., someone else reported seeing a monkey at 11700 Cypress Nook, about 2 miles away.

Florida Fish and Wildlife officials have been notified, Morgan said.

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From Tampabay.com

Bank robber escapes on public bus

   It’s risky enough to use a public bus as a getaway vehicle. But it really blows your cover if a dye pack explodes while you are trying to blend in with the regular commuters.

   A passenger alerted cops to the dye pack explosion, but the robber left the bus before they arrived.

   The robber was appropriately disguised — a bandana with the cap on top and big glasses— for bank surveillance cameras. But St. Petersburg police suspect he didn’t realize the buses have surveillance cameras, too.

School makes plea for toilet paper

   The principal of an elementary school in Melbourne is asking for toilet paper donations. And Carol Carmichael has put a large box in the school’s lobby to take the rolls.

   It isn’t just an attention-getting ploy to emphasize the budget plight of her school. It’s also a real way to get some flexibility in her spending.

   She told floridatoday.com that toilet paper donations allow her to spend her budget money on things like books or material for the classroom.

This interment will be for real

   Teocca Thompson-Thomas has kept her father’s ashes in her apartment for six years, but she finally decided to have him interred at the Florida National Cemetery in Bushnell.

   But when she made arrangements, she hit a snag, according to OrlandoSentinel.com. A funeral director told her that her father already was buried at the Arlington National Cemetery.

   To clear up the mystery, Arlington officials opened James Tyler Thompson’s vault and found an urn filled with rocks. That urn was provided by Thompson’s daughter from a relationship that predated his marriage to Thompson-Thomas’ mother in 1968.

   An attorney for the National Funeral Directors Association said no law was broken. And Thompson-Thomas regained the right to bury her father in a national cemetery.