Alligators, bananas and more top Florida’s year
ST. PETERSBURG — In 2019, Florida Banana managed to eclipse Florida Man. From alligator antics to naked people doing wacky things, Florida did not disappoint in the weird news department this year.
In December, a Miami couple spent more than $100,000 on the “unicorn of the art world” — a banana duct-taped to a wall — during Art Basel. The piece was widely mocked on social media, and someone at the art fair ripped it off the wall and ate it. Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan sold three editions of “Comedian,” each in the $120,000 to $150,000 range.
As they often do, alligators topped the list of odd stories. Perhaps the most visually interesting happened in October, when Paul Bedard, who is contracted with the state’s nuisance alligator program, responded to a call of a gator in a swimming pool in Parkland. Bedard “played” with the 8-foot long reptile until it became tired. Then he lifted it out of the water and held it over his head for an Instagram photo.
“I haven’t had a goodsized gator in a swimming pool in probably a year, so I was kind of looking forward to this when I got the call,“he said. The alligator was relocated to a wildlife park.
Humans tangled with gators in a multitude of other ways. One reptile knocked on a woman’s door the night before Thanksgiving in Fort Myers. In Martin County, two men poured Coors beer into an alligator’s mouth. They were arrested.
Alligators weren’t the only animals making headlines.
In August, a Lake Worth Beach man began feeding a kinkajou (a raccoon relative with a prehensile tail that’s native to Central and South America), but one day, it attacked his leg. “It was not a nice kinkajou,” the man’s girlfriend told the Palm Beach Post.
And a Labrador retriever somehow got behind the wheel of a car and did doughnuts in Port St. Lucie.
Folks attacked one another with all manner of items, including (but not limited to): pancake batter, Pop-Tarts, a fake Christmas tree, swords, McDonald’s condiment packets and roach spray.
A number of people were nude, or partially so, when they made the news.
In December, a Polk County, Fla., man was “buck naked” when he showed up to the front door of a home where an undercover sex sting operation was being conducted, sheriff ’s officials said. A naked Florida man burglarized an elementary school in Apopka and spread feces throughout the building.
In March, Miami motorists captured on camera a nearly nude man wearing hot pink socks, sneakers, skimpy underwear and a pink headband, bicycling backward down I-95.
As one does.