Deland, FL is a classy, classy place. Oh yeah.

Ooh, dose with melatonin at the wrong time of day and you can induce jet-lag. Have fun with that. Chamomile would probably have been a better choice.

awww, this makes me miss my alma mater an incredible amount. we had real freegans when i was there, and they seemed to do just fine.

...and the spokesperson just stood back and said nothing?

Why won't the obnoxious mower stop running over and over (under) my cursor? This is an awesome idea and I adore animal webcams, but the lawn mower is driving me batty!

From the CBS4 page:

"Initial reports had indicated that the animal's sharp defensive barb, located near the base of its tail, had lodged in the woman's neck. Those reports turned out to be unfounded."

Eagle rays aren't even aggressive; this was a freak accident.

It looks to me like it's dragging its right side. So if it is a gnome, I think it's one that has had a stroke. Perhaps this made it lose its natural wariness towards humans, or its camouflage ability. (These are apparently left-hemisphere skills for a gnome.)

I'll take the hoax-by-teens explanation, especially after seeing the second take from El Tribuno, but the kids should get some credit for the high creepiness factor.

Oh man. I never knew I needed to move to Belgium.

Maybe he actually did die a while back, and this resignation is just another front, tendered by his doppelganger.

This took a while for me to figure out. I find it visually attractive but unnatural to read after years of recipes and lab procedures.

I think that applying terms like "smart" and "dumb" to a reptile is about as accurate as calling one "tamed." They're programmed quite differently than we mammals, but just like other classes of creatures, I'm willing to bet that they can be desensitized to stimuli that they have learned are meaningless to their ongoing survival. It looks like this caiman is pretty desensitized to people and public interation overall. There's probably a cue, such a a specific location, that lets him know that it's feeding time. As long as he's not tricked into thinking it's feeding time when it's not, after 23 years, chances are that he's not going to become suddenly sensitive to stimuli that he has ignored for over two decades. If reptiles like to do one thing, it's conserve energy, and going after non-existent food is pretty inefficient.

Now, the croc pit & Steve Irwin, that's a whole different story...

Re: #s 11 and 38- As another person on the spectrum, this scares me. I already fail to look like the typical over-made-up female, large crowds stress me the hell out (looks of anxiety, anyone?), and I'm never really positive what my face is showing if I'm not actively concentrating on it. I mean, much of my time is spent re-playing and practicing social situations inside my head, and if I"m distracted, I'll let the related emotions, facial reactions, and even spoken reactions surface- and I'm sure these all look quite out-of-place. How will these (tics?) be interpreted? I'm pulled over for extra examination nearly every time I fly, and it's stressful enough as is without a bunch of morons trying to examine my emotions as well as my messenger bag.