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.

Amateur herpetologists wanted

   The University of Florida is soliciting public help in a study of Cuban treefrogs, which have become a nuisance in urban and suburban areas.

   Of course, the plea is aimed at Floridians who already capture and kill the frogs (the UF message says “humanely euthanize,” but we suspect that is so people don’t so badly smash up the critters that they can’t determine whether the really are Cuban treefrogs). There are detailed instructions on what to do for the survey, and they definitely will work better on a dead frog than a live one.

   And for those of us who can’t tell a Cuban treefrog from a native green, squirrel, barking or pinewoods treefrog, there is a handy photo gallery.

But what if they like it?

   It’s not a new idea, but Sarasota is considered piping opera or classical music into Five Points Park to chase away the homeless.

   Several homeless people told HeraldTribune.com that such offerings probably wouldn’t shoo them away. “If they were thumpin’ rap, I’d be gone,” Tyler Rausch, 46, told the Sarasota Herald Tribune.

   And what to opera buffs say? “I’m thinking they’re going to have to go to the drawing board on that one,” said restaurateur Paul Caragiulo, a tenor who studied opera in Italy. “If you want to clear the place, I’ll go over there and sing. I’ll get everybody out of there. That’s why I’m here selling pizza.”

Nude photos? Blame the butler

   Jose Lambiet of the Palm Beach Post has a knack for finding odd stories of the rich and powerful. Like this one on PalmBeachPost.com about nude photos of a 57-year-old Palm Beach socialite that have ended up in the public domain as part of a lawsuit.

   The photos of Ildiko Varga were taken by Alexis Mersentes, 72, whom Lambiet describes as “a serial groom of rich women.” They probably wouldn’t have come to light if Mersentes hadn’t married the widow of diet guru Robert Atkins.

   It gets convoluted. Varga sued Mersentes, saying he distributed the photos without her consent. But now Mersentes has joined Varga in a suit, saying the butler, who found the photos on a memory card, gave them to the trustees of Dr. Atkins’ $600 million-estate, with the aim of undercutting his standing with his wife, Veronica Atkins.

State cracks down on fox, coyote ownership

   This week, capping a 10-month undercover investigation, the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission arrested 12 people for buying or owning live foxes or coyotes. The animals were kept in enclosures so dogs could hunt them.

   Neither owning foxes and coyotes nor keeping them in large pens so they can be hunted is illegal. It’s only illegal if you don’t have all the licenses and permits, making sure the critters are vaccinated and legally imported and such.

   Several legal enclosures, often several hundred acres, provide areas where dogs can chase foxes and coyotes. The owners of these enclosures typically charge patrons a fee for their dogs to track the animals inside the enclosures, the wildlife commission says. Sounds a lot like legal dogfighting to us (we haven’t come across any cookbooks with fox or coyotes recipes lately).

   The commission is weighing whether to continue to allow the practice.