Your On The Street Reporter

INTRODUCTION

For human behavior, truth is stranger than fiction. Truth is more humorous than fiction. Truth is sadder than fiction, more bizarre, often more tragic, and usually more interesting.

In The CDA Press articles from Your On The Street Reporter, you will read about the strangeness, humor, sadness, bizarreness, hilarity, and tragedy of many of our daily activities. A few stories are recounted that took place in other parts of the world, but the emphasis in on America.

For the most part, the articles are taken from news media of episodes that are hilariously strange. For those that are tragic, your reporter will not parody or mock the participants. They will be written factually. You can choose to guffaw or groan.

I take no credit for this digest. The plots were already there, reported by the media. I merely formatted them into organized assemblages of believe-it-or-not narratives.

After reading these reports about human behavior, it might lead you to conclude that people are simply weird. Maybe so, but here’s an old saying: “The world is full of pots jeering at bottles.” Sitting now as pots, who knows if we will someday be bottles?

Quotation marks are reflective of direct quotes from the media, such as a newspaper. Sometimes the quotations reflect conversations between individuals, not media outlets. Each will be identified accordingly.

It has been a joy to go through the process of assembling and organizing the reports for this series of articles. I have been collecting them for many years. I hope you enjoy reading them.

— Your On The Street Reporter

•••

Report 1: Dog Shoots Itself While Looking for a Water Dish

Coeur d’Alene, Idaho

Marc Stewart, “Police Believe Man Shot His Dog,” Coeur d’Alene Press, March 15, 2008

Hello from Your On The Street Reporter. Don’t forget, as stated in the introduction, text within quotation marks are direct quotes from a news source. All other text reflects this writer’s summary of parts of the news article and my own biased and unfailingly correct views about the news article.

“A Coeur d’Alene man claims his dog accidently discharged the man’s handgun while the dog was trying to get a drink of water from the man’s nightstand.”

The water was in a water glass, and not a water dish, which created confusion on the part of the dog.

“Lee Rudkin said the pistol discharged eight times, including one round that struck Zeus, a 3-year-old Rottweiler, in the right side.”

The rapid succession of shots possibly occurred because Zeus’s wagging tail had become entangled with the gun’s trigger. Immediately after Zeus shot himself, he — logically enough — stopped wagging his tail, and the gun stopped firing.

“‘It was a one in a million shot,’ Rudkin said. ‘He’s never gotten up on the nightstand before.’”

Not to mention his getting up on the nightstand and firing a pistol. Anyway, police are not buying this story, because the nightstand had no paw-prints on it. The nightstand’s dust had not been disturbed, so lifting paw-prints was not necessary. Yep, the police checked for Zeus’s prints on the nightstand.

“One of the bullets struck the bed before continuing on to the nearby wall. Investigators concluded that the bullet on the bed didn’t line-up with any of the holes in the wall and that the trajectory angles didn’t match.”

The happenstance trajectories make sense because the dog was not an experienced shooter. Not once did Rudkin take Zeus to the local shooting range to hone his skills. What is more, Zeus has no thumbs, which placed him at a distinct disadvantage for properly aiming the pistol.

“Police have charged Rudkin with unlawful discharge of a firearm in the city and cruelty to animals. Rudkin said he doesn’t understand why the police didn’t test his hands for gunpowder residue and says it would have proved his innocence.”

The police deliberated about testing for gunpowder on the paws, tail, and tongue of Zeus, but the local budget did not allow such extensive forensics. The police explained they perform a gunpowder test only in the event of a fatality. If Zeus had shot himself in the head, his fatality would have brought forth a gunpowder test, thus freeing the alleged dog lover from his alleged crime.