Beware of hot sauce and antlers

While spending several days visiting my Mom in Lake George, NY last week, I discovered that I had tapped into a rich vein of "news of the weird" crime stories.

These were just a few of the colorful cops-beat articles that appeared in the Post-Star of nearby Glens Falls that week:

1. In a rough-and-ready Glens Falls bar called the Daily Double, a man named Frederick A. Stimpson was apparently dared by two of his friends to swipe some money out of the cash register. There's a good bet that a considerable amount of alcohol was involved.

Unfortunately for Stimpson, bartender Shawn Breault turned out to be a professional boxer and Toughman competitor. Interrupting the caper in progress, he threw some hot sauce in Stimpson's face, blinding him. Then he knocked him out with one punch.

One of the people who had challenged Stimpson, Christine M. Amilfitano, was found to have a filet knife on her person. But there was a logical explanation, she told police: She planned to use it later to filet a snapping turtle.

2. How can you not read a story under the headline: "Neighbor's Dispute Ends in Antler Stabbing"? It seems that Bernie Baker of Moreau was building a fence on his property with some of his friends. His next door neighbor, Stacey Harrington, took exception to the fence construction, and an argument ensued -- whereupon Harrington went back into the house, emerged with a set of antlers and attacked Baker and his friends with them.

"My friends were stabbed with deer antlers, and for what?" complained Tracy Baker afterward.

3. In addition, I loved this rather deadpan line from a brief article about a burglary:

"Sandford said Anastasia went into the woman's home, vandalized it and then head-butted the woman. She suffered minor injuries."

The same week, there was also a high-speed (or low-speed) chase between a bicycle cop and a bicycle-riding fugitive on the Lake George bike path, a teenager who allegedly threw a pair of electric clippers at her mother, and perhaps the world's first recorded hit-and-run case involving a cow and a boat (the cow somewhow wandered into a canal, where it was struck and killed by a boat that kept going).

All of this would seem to prove that favorite mantra of the National Rifle Association -- take away guns and people bent on violence would just use ...

Well, antlers. Or hot sauce. Or their heads.