A watery grave

I think I set a record for the most stories I have ever written in one day yesterday. Five. Plus taking pictures of two fires, writing up a couple briefs, filing photo captions and cataloging about 50 DUI reports.

But the pure absurdity of one of the stories I got to write cancels out any stress I might have felt after such long hours. I nearly fell out of my chair when a sheriff's official told me about this: At the edge of the receding waters of a local reservoir, deputies found the remains of a dog and chew toys sealed in plastic bags, wrapped in a towel, encased in cement, poured inside a cooler, which was sealed with silicon, fastened with wood screws and further secured with duct tape.

(On a side note, my high school English teacher would cringe at the ridiculous overuse of passive voice in that sentence, however, it must remain without a subject, since the perpetrators of this crime remain at large).

Attached was a note that said, "Mommy and daddy loves you," which is bound to get worse grammar marks than my own out-of-control passive sentence structure.

Most of my informant's quotes I couldn't use in my story, because they contained off-the-record references to groups like "tweakers."

Part of what gives this story such mirth, is that the alternative was so horrible. Officials thought it could have possibly been a dead infant inside the cooler. This blog entry would have had an entirely different tone if that were the case.

Lesson learned: I guess not all people think simply digging a grave for a deceased pet is the best option.