Thanksgiving is a day to reflect on the good things in life and for the staff writers at HuffPost Weird News, the thing we're most thankful is the state of Florida.
For whatever reason, the Sunshine State has been the cure for many a slow news day. Even if things are normal in all the other 49 states (and Puerto Rico), Florida is there to provide.
Take Olawale Ayodeji Agbede, 22, of Brandon, Fla., who was arrested earlier this week for spanking a police horse on its rear.
The alleged horse spanking took place around 2 a.m. Sunday morning in Gainesville, Fla. Officials said they saw Agbede hit "Rusty" the police horse four times on its rump, Gainesville.com reported.
Agbede was arrested after a short chase and he told authorities that he hit Rusty twice because he was afraid the horse was about to knock him over. He now faces charges of striking or interfering with a police animal.
Meanwhile, officials in Jacksonville, Fla. are asking for the public's help identifying a burglar, who has been responsible for two recent dollar store robberies, WJXT-TV reported.
In one robbery, the thrifty thief stole four cans of Axe body spray from a Dollar General outlet by smashing the front window. He used the same M.O. to steal a package of Soft Batch cookies from a Family Dollar store.
Those two bizarre crimes are just the tip of the iceberg of what has been an exceptionally fruitful week for Weird Florida fanatics.
Melissa Miller, 41, was arrested earlier this week for doing 100 mph in a 30 mph zone. She told the cops who pulled her over that she "... was letting the Lord spirit [sic] guide me," and claimed she banged the car horn long and hard because of "the Lord telling me to do it."
In addition, Roger Alan Henderson was arrested after he urinated on a police car. The cop who pulled him over did so by mistake, and was about to let him go, until he noticed the yellow liquid dripping off the vehicle. Then Henderson got popped for indecent exposure.
Florida became a weird news hotbed in the late 1990s, early 2000s and Florida historian Gary Mormino jokes tectonics may play a role.
"The rationale used to be that America tilted toward the west and all the nuts rolled to California," Mormino, a history professor at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg, told AOL Weird News in 2011. "Now, perhaps, there's been a tectonic shift and America tilts toward the southeast."
Need more proof that Florida is No. 1 in weird news? Check out the video gallery for strange stories that have happened in the last month.
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