There were plenty of strange news items in South Florida during 2005. As usual a good number of them involved animals. Some you might have read about in prior posts of this blog.

In no specific order here are some of the highlights.

A Collier County woman was afraid her neighbor's Chihuahua was going to attack her, so she shot and killed it.

Three teenagers were charged with kidnapping a 15-year-old boy and demanding $50 ransom be dropped off at a Fort Myers Taco Bell.

A homeless man obsessed with tennis star Anna Kournikova swam naked across Biscayne Bay, in Miami Beach, in search of her home and got caught in the buff at her neighbor's pool. As police arrested him, he screamed, "Anna! Save me!"

A drunk Monroe County prosecutor thought it would be funny to streak across a parking lot and hop into a friend's car. The problem was he jumped naked into the wrong car and was arrested.

Police checking to make sure no one was hurt after a tornado ripped the roof off a Palm Bay home said they found 54 marijuana plants growing in a bedroom.

In Port Charlotte, a pastor called police to remove 16 congregants who refused to stop singing as he tried to begin his sermon.

More than a dozen Broward County deputies burst onto the scene of a funeral - reportedly with guns draw - and arrested the deceased's grandson. It turned out they had the wrong guy.

Once again, O.J. Simpson couldn't stay out of the news. In July, a neighbor called 911 and reported Simpson was being beaten by his girlfriend. Later that month Simpson was ordered to pay $25,000 for pirating satellite television signals.

A Key West man robbed a bank with a pitchfork.

One Burmese python swallowed a Siamese cat, another slithered into a poultry shack and ate a turkey before getting stuck inside because of the bulging bird and yet another tried to devour a 6-foot alligator before the ambitious effort caused the 13-foot snake to burst.

And the answer to the python problems, a beagle puppy, named Python Pete, was trained to sniff out pythons in Everglades Park.

Can't wait for see what happens this year.