Variety of oddness involving scofflaws
Sketches involving scofflaws, folly and fun stuff follow:
• A cast net, several undersize smallmouth bass in the cooler and the inability by one of the slinging brigands to produce a license came together as a full-blown gotcha event along the Olentangy River.
• Was it ironic déjà vu or just the way things are when a bald eagle picking at a road-killed raccoon was run over by a vehicle in Greene County? The much-ruffled eagle at least survived.
• The fishing lure impaled on both webbed feet prevented flight but didn’t prevent the cuffed white pelican to swim by kicking like a frog until it was rescued and transported to rehab in Erie County.
• A trumpeter swan with unexplained head trauma squatting in a Wayne County back yard was captured and hustled to a raptor center without further incident.
• A Madison County landowner, permitted by Ohio law to hunt his property without purchasing a license or deer permit, admitted taking three deer in a two-deer county and two bucks in a one-buck state.
• The detritus left behind when he cleaned out his vehicle at the wildlife area cost an Erie County man $300 in littering fines after a scrap of paper with an address was discovered by a wildlife officer, shortly followed by a visit to the residence.
• Facing evidence retrieved from two trash bags found floating in Paint Creek, a Ross County woman admitted it was her doing. A few days later, after similar bags were found in the creek, the woman essentially exercised her Miranda right to remain silent.
• A man acknowledged using a motorboat to concentrate ducks on an Auglaize County lake and drive them from a no-hunting zone to a hunting area where several of the ducks later were killed. Because duck killing within regulations isn’t illegal, was the $155 in fines and court costs imposed for duck rustling?
• Shoppers were evacuated from a Logan County store by the menacing presence of a Cooper’s hawk, which was captured after being stunned by an arrow from a Nerf bow set grabbed from an aisle. The unharmed hawk was released out of doors to the relief of paying costumers and of the store’s resident sparrows and mice.
• How mourning doves had the time and access to build a nest on the garage door motor in Heath is one question. How the eggs got hatched is another. Why the garage owner insisted the hatchlings had to be evicted is a third. At any rate, a wildlife officer placed the occupied nest in a nearby tree to the apparent satisfaction of all.
• The heavy skunk odor seeping into a Fayette County residence was traced to a dead polecat in the crawl space. The body removed, the house smells eventually reverted to whatever was cooking for dinner.
• No, the two travelers didn’t smell a rat — nor, as they first thought, a raccoon — as they drove the Ohio Turnpike on the road from Chicago to New York City. Discovered at the service center stubbornly lodged against the engine was a baking groundhog, which ended its journey in a trash barrel some distance from the food court and Broadway.
• A series of ditch fires along a Fairfield County road sparked by a trailer dragging an axle without a wheel got snuffed out when the off-duty wildlife officer went at the flames hard with a canoe paddle. The trailer, missing a second wheel and at a spark-free standstill, was found abandoned up the road a piece.
outdoors@dispatch.com