Devil in details, but not in Inglis

When the ruckus was over, when the phones at Town Hall stopped ringing and the reporters went home and the ACLU called off its lawyers, Carolyn Risher, the mayor who banned Satan from this little town, felt like she had changed the world.

"It opened up people's eyes, yes sir," she says. "People finally saw that God belongs in everything."

The letters came from Canada and Australia, from Texas, Alaska and Wisconsin, and they filled four three-ring binders and a decorative Santa Claus box in her office.

"Satan is alive and well," wrote a woman from California.

"God bless you as you continue to rid your town of vice," wrote a man from Georgia.

One man wished to move his Winnebago-based business from Nashville to Inglis, population 1,625.

"Each of my handtowels is 100% cotton, and stained with a mysterious shrouded image that may or may not be the face of Jesus," he wrote. "Even if you are skeptical about the controversial religious image, they're still handsome towels and they will absorb perspiration. Everyone is a winner!"

All the mail was positive, the mayor says, save a single letter from an elderly woman who included a photo of her middle finger.

The response taught her, and a lot of people here, a lesson about the separation of church and state.

It's a bad idea.

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Read the rest of the story, by St. Petersburg Times staff writer Ben Montgomery, on Tampabay.com.  (Image:  Chris Zuppa, Times Photographer)

Woman attacked by fox, then shot by husband

Friday did not turn out very well for a Levy County woman who went outside to investigate "an unknown animal" in her yard.  Said animal turned out to be a red fox, which attacked the woman, sinking its teeth into her left leg.  When she could not escape from the fox, according to Gainesville.com, the woman told her husband to go get a gun.  Said gun turned out to be a 22-caliber rifle.  The man fired seven times.  He killed the fox.  He also shot his wife in the leg.  The fox, which remained attached to the woman's leg, had to be pried off by paramedics.  It was sent to a lab to be tested for rabies "due to its unusual behavior."  The woman is in stable condition at Shands, University of Florida.  The Levy County Sheriff's Office said no charges are pending in connection with the unfortunate incident.