Today, we start a regular new feature on The Plank: Florida or Russia? Both places produce stories that boggle the mind: cannibalistic meth heads, people getting into bar fights so vicious they end in death when one guy puts his shoe-clad foot up another guy's rectum, etc. So we've decided to play a little game with them, since it's so often so hard to tell the difference.
On the night of August 20, around 20 people broke the lock on the aquarium of a neighboring town, where some of them held down the guards and the others began wrapping up what they'd come for: "four animals, including dolphins and belugas." When the police arrived on the scene, the perpetrators presented them with "printouts of the decisions of various appellate courts" that said the aquarium had come to own the animals illegally.
Florida or Russia?
Last Friday, a 24-year-old mermaid was severely injured when she fell off a boat and hit the propeller, nearly severing her left leg, authorities said. Her two friends in the boat, also mermaids, were unharmed.
Florida or Russia?
Passengers at a local transit hub discovered and killed a nearly seven-foot snake. A few days later, a cat appeared carrying a wriggling eight-inch baby snake in its mouth. It turned out that the snake, having escaped from its owner, had had time to lay eggs in the transit authority before she was killed.
Florida or Russia?
Last week, a 45-year-old man walked into the emergency room with the metal leg of a bar stool sticking out of his head. The metal had penetrated the base of his skull, and had gone through nearly five inches of brain matter. The leg was succesfully removed, though doctors haven't had a chance to ask the man, who appeared to have been sober, how it had gotten there.
Florida or Russia?
ANSWERS:
1. Russia. This happened when 20 Muscovites went to Yaroslavl, 160 miles northeast of Moscow, to reclaim what they felt was their acquatic property. They were all arrested and authorities are investigating the matter.
2. Florida. According to Tampa Bay Times, 24-year-old Samantha Maywell was injured at Hernando Beach. She suffered two severe breaks in her leg.
3. Russia. According to the Russian news agency Interfax, this happened at a train station in the Siberian city of Tomsk. The snake was determined to be an elaphe schrenskii, a non-poisonous snake indigenous to the Russian Far East.
4. Russia. This story came from the industrial Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk, and, according to the doctors who removed the bar stool leg, the man has fared remarkably well and the surgery was remarkably uncomplicated.
More soon.