Welcome to Tuesday, your post-Monday palate cleanser. Enjoy.
Residents in the New Port Richey neighborhood of Gulf Harbors are upset about a deal made with the city to split the cost of turning an abandoned local golf course into a park over the discovery that the property is contaminated and would cost more than $4 million to clean up. This after some locals think the city wildly overpaid for the property in the first place. Wait — a government body paying too much for something for which the taxpayers are also on the financial hook? That's not really a thing that happens, is it?
Wildlife officers spooked a "non-aggressive" black bear into a tree in a residential Polk County neighborhood, but it eventually came down (and was presumably relocated) without incident. A resident is quoted in the story about it being trash day, as if that might have more to do with the bear's appearance than half the county having been on fire for six weeks.
In other Polk County human-animal interaction news, firefighters rescued an injured owl from a man's backyard pool and transported it to a rehabilitative facility. Who wants to bet it had that super-perturbed "fuck you, I'm an owl" expression on its face the whole time? You know the one. (See above.)
And finally, a weeklong multi-agency sting operation resulted in the arrests of 39 accused sexual predators and prostitutes — many of whom apparently think they live in a world in which A) trying to hook up with children on the internet is still a pretty risk-free, foolproof and casual thing to do, and B) that undercover cops really have to admit they're cops if you ask them if they're cops.
This article appears in May 18-25, 2017.