• They are the world's most fearsome fighting team!

Turtles: slow, armored, old, and deadly. Sure, you might find it “cute” the way they bumble along, scritch-scritch-scritching across lake-bound logs with their tiny little claws. You might coo at them as they blink at you slowly from the terrarium with heavy-lidded eyes. You might giggle as they retract their heads into their shells like penises shrinking in the cold. But make NO mistake! Turtles want to end your life.

I know that this may be old news to some, but I feel our diligence to the great turtle threat may have diminished in recent years. How do I know? Check out this terrifying story:

Authorities began investigating in September 2007 after a Union County, N.C., teen swam in her backyard pool with two pet turtles and a friend from South Carolina. Both girls developed bloody diarrhea, vomiting, fever and stomach cramps; one developed kidney failure and spent eight days in the hospital.

Have we become so lax as to let our children swim with turtles? Our children, for goodness sake? I guess we’ve forgotten that turtles are clearly out to murder the human race (or at least cause us great intestinal distress for a series of days) by harboring salmonella.

It wouldn’t be so bad if they weren’t so damn cute. They’ve lulled us into a deadly complacency with all their slow reptilian charms. Consider this:

Inverness, Florida — The Great American Cooter Fest is returning to Citrus County, from October 23 - 25.

The festival takes its name after the area's local turtles [emphasis mine].

And how are these turtles celebrated? I’ll tell you. They’re celebrated with the world’s largest traveling collection of Lynyrd Skynyrd memorobelia, a “Cooter Idol and Miss Cooter competition,” as well as a “Cooteriffic Coed Softball Classic.” Damn you, diabolical turtles!

You may as well call your “Cooterfest” the “Salmonella Spree.” People will surely die.

• Don't You Dare Put That Cooter in Your Mouth!

And while festivals dedicated to turtles are clearly high-risk situations, the turtle plot is actually most terrifying when it comes to the little ones. At certain stages in their life cycle, through crafty use of evolution, turtles have made themselves irresistibly bite sized, putting our orally fixated toddlers at great risk. Indeed, swimming with turtles seems to be the least of our worries. According to the same article, “Other cases turned up elsewhere, many involving direct contact with turtles, including children kissing turtles or putting them in their mouths…” Other elsewhere cases totaled 41 in 2007, in states as diverse as California and Illinois.

The clouds of the turtle onslaught grow ever darker on the horizon. The following footage was recently released, which I suspect is documentation of the next great turtle push in the mass murder of humanity:

While I can’t say that a turtle caused the above explosion, I can’t necessarily say it didn’t either. All I can say is watch your back.

The Portland Police are looking for a suspect in a sexual assault that occurred early Wednesday morning. From the police:

• Click the image to zoom

On October 7, 2009, at approximately 12:30 a.m., a woman was attacked after getting off a Tri-Met bus at the intersection of Southwest Capital Highway and Southwest Sunset Boulevard.

The male suspect followed the woman off the bus and he continued following her across the street where he attacked the woman and sexually assaulted her. The male suspect ran from the area after a concerned citizen confronted the suspect.

A photograph of the suspect taken while he was boarding the bus is attached to this news release. The suspect is described as being in his early to mid twenties, is approximately 5'9" tall and weighs approximately 160 pounds. He was seen wearing a white t-shirt and light blue jeans.

Anyone with information concerning the identity of the suspect or his location should call the Portland Police at 503-823-HELP.

Or should I say: THOUGHT YOU COULD OUTSMART US FOREVER, DIDN'T YOU... THE LIZARD!? For too long, New York has been menaced by social malcontents in children's costumes who play willy-nilly with the lives of this city's fair and honest citizens! For too long, the public menace known as SPIDER-MAN has spoilt this grand city with his nefarious schemes and attention-hungry stunts—causing many a New Yorker undue grief and dissatisfaction!

And don't get me started on THE LIZARD! That freak has been crawling about the sewers and sloughs of our admirable metropolis for DECADES, always harboring a sordid and crafty plot, or perhaps ordering about those miniature, even freakier tiny lizards that he has at his beck and call! To those of you who claim Spider-Man is some sort of "hero," I ask you this: WHAT SORT OF "HERO" ALLOWS A MAN-SIZED LIZARD TO PROWL ABOUT NEW YORK CITY AT ITS LEISURE, LEAVING SMEARS OF HIS UNSANITARY AND UNSIGHTLY REPTILIAN SLIME WHEREVER HE GOES AND NO DOUBT SUPPING ON OUR CITIZENS' PETS AND YOUNGSTERS?!

• Photo credit: Peter Parker/Daily Bugle

WELL, NO MORE! Proudly displaying its usual tradition of reliability and inquisitiveness, the award-winning DAILY BUGLE is proud to report that we have discovered PHOTOGRAPHIC PROOF that the fiend known as THE LIZARD is, in fact, SPIDER-MAN!

We trust this PHOTOGRAPHIC EVIDENCE will be enough, but should you read more, the Daily Bugle's London bureau has the details.

As the revered and admired PUBLISHER of the DAILY BUGLE, I hereby request—nay, DEMAND—that the New York City Police Department IMMEDIATELY arrest Spider-Man, AKA the Lizard, so that New York's disgusted citizens can begin PRESSING CHARGES. I also DEMAND that you bring me a fresh pot of coffee and a cigar! No, Betty, you halfwit! Don't write that down! STOP TRANSCRIBING! And get Robbie up here ASAP! We've got a new page one!

THANKS FOR THE NIGHTMARES, PANAMA.

Wednesday morning started bleakly for the Oregon Department of Human Services Children and Families Division—at 10AM a woman known only as “B.D.” filed suit against the Division and two of its caseworkers seeking $5 million in damages for years of abuse.

According to the complaint, Children and Family Services (CAF) removed the woman from her natural parents’ home around 1993, when she was four years old. B.D. was placed in the care of her maternal grandmother and her grandmother’s husband, David Purcell. For years, B.D. endured rape and abuse at the hands of Purcell and eventually came forward about the abuse in 1999, at the age of 10. Purcell is currently serving prison time for his crimes against her.

But then this August, B.D. discovered that she was not the first person Purcell abused: he had been previously convicted in 1980 of raping his 14-year-old daughter and in 1987 of rape and sodomy related to a stepdaughter.

Learning that, B.D. wanted to hold the state accountable for putting her in an abusive situation. The suit she brought on Wednesday claims that CAF failed in its duty to provide “safe and appropriate foster care,” and that the two caseworkers (named “John Doe I” and “John Doe II” in the complaint) had “constructive knowledge” about Purcell’s past convictions. Attorney Kelly Clark, who is representing B.D., explains the case in blunter terms.

“They should have known. That’s what it means,” Clark says.

Clark says he is confident that legal pressures have forced change in many private institutions like the Catholic Church, but that public systems like foster care remain largely unscrutinized. He hopes this case will bring a change in policy, but he’s not holding his breath for a genuine change of heart at DHS. “If it has to be done because they’re afraid of liability or afraid of bad publicity, I don’t really care. I want them to do the right thing.”

Read on for more details about the case.

Calling all Blogtown Junior Crime Stoppers! Have you seen this sign?

Our good friends over at Bitch magazine had their awesome sign (which was donated, by the way) stolen off their Alberta storefront last night. From their blog post appropriately entitled, "Is That a Bitch Sign in Your Pocket or Are You Just a Giant A-Hole?":

Red alert, readers! Lock up your signs because there is a thief on the loose! If you see this sign floating around NE Alberta Street (or in some jerkwad's apartment somewhere) please bring it back to us! Our sign was a donation from Ferrousity and we really feel it tied the whole office together.

And to the major A-hole(s) who decided it was cool to take this sign in the first place: Congratulations! We hope your friends are impressed by your feats of thievery. You should feel especially proud of yourself since we are a nonprofit organization, which means that money for a new sign will have to come out of funds that would have gone toward hosting community events, publishing our print magazine, and obtaining books for our free lending library. So, you know, way to go on the whole stealing thing.

So if you see this sign (or want to offer an anonymous tip regarding its whereabouts), email our nice, sign-less friends at Bitch. And remember! There's a special place in hell for people who steal from well-written non-profit feminist quarterlies (and blogs)!

It's not too shocking to hear a fight broke out in front of Sewickly's bar on Hawthorne last Friday night, but it is unusual to have an actual video of the fight. Portlander Phillip Ragaway stepped outside Tanker down the block to smoke a cigarette, saw the rowdy fight break out and rushed over to film the throw down on his cell phone camera.

"All of a sudden a guy pulls out a gun and I was like, 'Whoa, I'm going to get behind this pole,'" says Ragaway, who continued filming. According to the police, one guy pulled a knife on a man who had a concealed weapons permit. The guy with the gun fired into the street and the fight dispersed. Over all the swearing, it was impossible to tell what the fight was actually about.

Very quickly, says Ragaway, about a dozen cops showed up, put the two guys on the ground and took them into custody. Watch the very tense video here:

Why did Ragaway go through the trouble of uploading his short video to YouTube? "Everyone likes to see a bar fight," he explained.

And now for some grisly news you didn't want to know about Fleet Week. Sheriff's department Lieutenant Mary Lindstrand called to inform us that every year the big ships coming into the port for Fleet Week churn up the bottom of the Willamette and up floats.... dead bodies that have been missing for months! According to Lt. Lindstrand, three bodies have surfaced in the last two weeks thanks to the Navy boats. Two resolve missing persons cases, but the third is a total mystery — a 50 something woman wearing a rainbow "Embrace Diversity" bracelet who had been in the river at least six months.

The Sheriff cannot reveal what they suspect as cause of death, but they are hoping someone can help them figure out who the woman was. "She's obviously a very caring person to be wearing a bracelet like that," says Lindstrand.

Photo and more info below.

Remember the “Iraq’s Most Wanted” playing cards?

Police and nonprofit Crime Stoppers of Oregon released a similar deck this morning, each card profiling an unsolved murder. On each card is the face of the person killed, making for a pretty grisly game of gin rummy.

Also, instead of putting the cards into the hands of soldiers and law enforcement officers, the cards are replacing regular decks in jails in four counties at $1 a pop. “People who engage in criminal behavior brag about [it] to other inmates,” Sergeant Paul Weatheroy from the Portland Police Bureau's cold case unit explained. He hopes the cards with help inmates cough up clues in the 52 unsolved crimes.

“The Mayor of 42nd Avenue,” Edward Victor Morgan, who was murdered 15 years ago today, is the six of diamonds. Joshua Michael Jeffries, the youngest victim in Portland’s cold case file, is the eight of hearts. Earl Richard Barker, shot and killed less than a year ago, is the Queen of hearts.

I don't know what's funnier: that a swamp rodent took up residence in a Louisiana WalMart or that the WalMart employees were allegedly keeping the thing as a pet and had named it Norman. Sadly, things got out of hand when the nutria scurried across an aisle, causing a woman to shriek and sue for $2000 in psychological damage.

That's intriguing, because it's the exact same response Matt Davis had when he hunted for nutria in Milwaukie back in the fall, but he hasn't gotten around to suing anyone yet. Even though, as the above article grimly reminds us, "Nutria have bright orange buck teeth and can weigh up to 18 pounds."

I figure there has to be some other side to this story - who are these nutria lovers who harbor the rat-tailed rodents as pets? The WalMart employees aren't speaking up in Norman's defense. In fact, the only nutria defender I can find is this bizarre little Beaverton blog that is home to this equally bizarre little poll:

Question: Are nutria cute?

Answers Percent
1. Yes - 43%
2. No - 11%
3. Sometimes - 9%
4. Only the babies - 6%
5. What? Those giant rats?! You've gotta be kidding me! - 32%

So nutria lovers are a silent majority! Who knew? Meanwhile, the Statesman Journal has some sage advice for how to humanely put down nutria: shoot them in the head.