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By Tim Istock

So there’s a segment in the Clemmons Courier that simply goes by the name, “Blotter,” and it carries the following description:

Below is a list of crime investigations and activities reported by the Forsyth County Sheriff’s Office in Clemmons and Lewisville last week.

It is easily one of my favorite sections of the paper because you never know what you’re going to find there.

Here are a few actual examples:

Police call — Suspicious man who was acting suspicious.

Hmm… I don’t know about you, but the whole thing sounds very suspicious to me.

Misuse of 911 — Subject called 911 to report missing house keys.

Listen, I’ve just gotta tell you, if I called 911 every time I couldn’t find my car/house keys they would have to set up a dedicated hotline to my home.

Police call — Simple assault, non aggravated assault — Man claimed another male threw sweat on him in the sauna.

OK, so this was obviously a “heat of the moment” act of aggression, but I have to wonder how the perp in this one is going to be charged, assault with a glandular weapon?

Actually, all kidding aside for a moment, on a whim I decided to search the net to see if any such statute even existed, and lo and behold, North Carolina is one of many states with just such a law on the books. It’s called battery by bodily fluid/intentional exposure, and it frequently involves spitting, but can involve throwing or discharging any human bodily fluid. The charge is a Class I felony, meaning it’s punishable by a possible prison sentence. The maximum penalty a defendant can receive upon conviction is 3.5 years prison and $10,000 in fines.

So there you have it, the next time you go getting all lathered up over someone cutting the line at the deli counter, you might want to consider just keeping your lather to yourself.

As you can no doubt infer by now, there are all kinds of unusual 911 requests for assistance, but I just have to be honest with you, this next one really had me scratching my head.

Police service — non criminal call for service — Resident concerned about wild geese on property.

OK folks, now let’s stop and ponder this one for a moment because I for one have a few questions:

Did the homeowners who felt compelled to make this call really and truly consider the geese incursion onto their property a genuine emergency worthy of having law enforcement personnel being pulled away from other more serious issues like rape, murder and sweat hurling? 

And, if by some astronomically warped sense of reality they actually did, what exactly were they expecting the officers to do once they arrived on the scene, order the geese to stop what they were doing (which in this case would be eating and pooping because that is all they ever do) and slowly put their wings up over their head so that nobody would get hurt? 

Did they then envision the itinerant geese being wing cuffed, put into the back of the squad car, and taken downtown for web-foot printing and mug shots? Maybe they imagined those prints being entered into a national gooseprint database and turning up a match, possibly hitting on the likes of El Ganso, head of the infamous Venezuelan grass cartel, or maybe Lucy-Goosey, the notorious serial pooper?

And let’s say the geese in question decided to hightail it prior to being apprehended, would they lead pursuing officers on a village-wide wild goose chase (I’m sorry, I just couldn’t help it), complete with strategic checkpoints on all of the major roads leading in and out of the neighborhood and wanted posters tacked to neighborhood telephone poles with descriptions of the escapees and offers of rewards for information leading to their capture?

Lastly, suppose the geese decide to return to the scene of the crime, what then? Do the homeowners attempt to have the whole gaggle of them served with a restraining order?

Naw, my guess is the trespassing geese were simply given a warning citation and asked to move along to the next available yard while the homeowners went back to the business of dreaming up their next contrived crisis worthy of getting their tail feathers in a ruff.

Pretty amazing isn’t it? Some people’s children.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to run along. You see, I need to place an urgent call to 911 because there’s a herd of wild deer out in my front yard eating my wife’s hosta plants.