It's the case of the vomiting vultures: a vacation home returned to only to find it occupied by vultures, and all the things that come out of vultures.
Siobhan Casimano described the smell as “like a thousand rotting corpses.” The vultures have destroyed screen enclosures and have overtaken the pool and barbecue. The few times the family has visited, they’ve had to park their car in the garage to avoid the birds pecking at them with their beaks.
It gets worse, because someone is feeding the vultures, because of course they are, it's Florida.
“Imagine 20 vultures trapped, biting each other — and they can bite through bones,” she said. “They would bang against my windows running away from a bird that was attacking them. Blood was everywhere. It was a vile, vicious, traumatic event. And it was Memorial Day, so no company I called would come out to help me.”
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The sheriff in Volusia County, Fla., reports that "a gentlemen was apprehended today while committing a burglary of a vending machine at Pine Ridge High School" in Deltona.
Adds the AP:
...spokesman Andrew Gant says a deputy stationed at Pine Ridge High School was notified of the trapped raccoon Wednesday and called animal control for assistance. A vending machine operator was also contacted to unlock the door. They rolled the vending machine to an open area of the school and after about two hours the raccoon was set free.
The sheriff's Facebook posting has a lot of boomer energy in the comments.
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All the participants at the 3-day Volusia, Florida orgy were naked and used aliases, and for obvious reasons, DNA-based identification "is not going to be an option, which means we'll probably never find out who stole the Glock from the bedside table. (Image: Eyes Wide Shut/Warners; Askild Antonsen, CC BY-SA, modified) (Thanks, Gnat!)
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Endless casts of land crabs have invaded a neighborhood in Port St. Lucie, Florida. Apparently heavy rains have driven the crustaceans to seek shelter in people's homes. Groceries have reported a run on butter. (OK, that last part isn't true.) Read the rest
Axciom buys records from Florida's DMV (which include non-driver IDs) at $0.01/each.
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How bad are things at Donald Trump's garbage Doral golf resort? On Saturday the resort is scheduled to host a golf tournament run by a Miami-based strip club. Read the rest
When asked how his school taught The Holocaust, Spanish River High School principal William Latson said that "I can’t say the Holocaust is a factual, historical event" and that “you have your thoughts, but we are a public school and not all of our parents have the same beliefs.”
After a year of anger in Boca Raton, Florida, Latson was finally removed from the job, reports CBS News.
The school district did not initially punish Latson for his comments. Instead, he received counseling and was encouraged to expand his school's Holocaust curriculum, according to CBS West Palm Beach affiliate WPEC-TV. The district said Latson also visited the U.S. Holocaust Museum to increase his "personal knowledge" of the genocide. But the district announced Monday that Latson would be immediately reassigned because "his leadership has become a major distraction for the school community." ... The district said Latson had "made a grave error in judgment in the verbiage" of his email to the parent.
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Days after an appeals court panel ordered the unsealing of thousands of pages of documents from one of the civil suits arising from billionaire Jeffrey Epstein's secret sweetheart plea bargain that allowed him to escape any serious penalties for years of alleged trafficking and raping of young teens, he has been arrested by the FBI-NYPD Crimes Against Children Task Force and now faces charges related to dozens of sex offenses against young girls.
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More than a decade ago, a federal prosecutor named Alexander Acosta set up a secret sweetheart deal for Jeffrey Epstein, a wealthy, Trump-connected admitted multiple rapist of underaged teen girls who was thought to be running a trafficking ring for wealthy, well-connected sexual predators, that saw Epstein serving only 13 months in a minimum security facility, on a work-release program that let him spend most of that time out of a cell.
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The city council of Riviera Beach, Florida has voted unanimously to pay $600,000 to criminals who seized control of the city's computers through a ransomware attack, after three weeks of being locked out of the city systems (the city has also voted to spend $1m replacing its computers).
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An Orlando homeowner owned a second lot next to the house. He added a pool that straddled the property lines. Then, following foreclosure, the two lots were sold to different owners, one of whom erected a fence. Over the pool. Through the garage.
When you're just dipping your toe in the real estate market
It's all so very "Florida"! Cities that don't enforce setback rules. Cities that tolerate structures spanning multiple residential lots. Sales that split combined lots into multiple lots without consideration of what is on the lots. Inspectors, appraisers and mortgage lenders saying "this is fine!". People building fences over pools and through garages. Read the rest
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis says that after the Mueller Report was published, the FBI came to him to explain its conclusion that at least two Florida county's voting machines were hacked by Russians during the 2016 election, but that they swore him to secrecy so he can't reveal which counties and which machines were hacked.
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A dozen mating manatees stopped traffic on the Courtney Campbell Causeway in Tampa, Florida. Apparently some drivers reported a whale in distress but it turned out to be the manatees in a "mating ball" or "mating herd." And it happened before, a few years ago, in the same spot! Must be something in the water...
From the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission:
Manatees mate in herds consisting of a focal female and multiple males, from a few to over a dozen, attempting to mate with her. Mating herds are most often observed during the warmer months, but can occur year-round. They can last anywhere from a few hours up to a week long. The manatees are often observed splashing or climbing on top of each other in the water.
(The Drive via Daily Grail)
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Mark reported earlier this week that a Florida man was charged with a crime over the "I EAT ASS" window sticker on his truck, and with resisting arrest for refusing to remove it; here's the dashcam video.
I EAT ASS window sticker [you bet your ass that's an Amazon link] Read the rest
'Drain the swamp,' said the man whose resort swimming pools are so filthy, Florida state health inspectors had to close 'em ten times in one year, reports QZ. Read the rest
Florida Man is the inaugural kickstarter from Los Angeles's incomparable comics store Secret Headquarters (previously): it challenges players to fill in the blanks from hundreds of cards capturing actual headlines about actual Floridians, creating hilarious, Cards Against Humanity-style madlibs. $20 gets you a game (early bird, rising to $25), $50 gets you a game and expansion pack, and there are tiers with tons of swag and of course a retailer bulk-discount pack.
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A room at a Universal Studios Florida hotel tonight will cost you $197-$536 (plus admission tickets to the park), but make sure that you do all your soda drinking in one compact session, because Universal has deployed the creepily named Validfill RFID system, which limits your self-service (that is, you do the labor) soda refills to two hours after purchase, and after the time window expires, "you are denied soda by a robot voice."
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