Besides the Weasels and Polecats Seeking Office, Ferrets Also on State Ballots

Pat Wright, the Libertarian Party’s nominee for lieutenant governor, is running on a platform to legalize the ownership of ferrets in this state (no, really -- see accompanying). Pro-ferret folks say the weasels can turn on the charm and are very intelligent. Opponents counter that they have a vicious side. I dunno -- ferrets don’t sound much different from lawyers.

Blowin’ in the Brentwood wind: Guess whose gardener recently received a citation for using a gasoline-powered leaf blower? Why, ex-mayor Richard Riordan’s. It was Riordan, you may recall, who signed a city ordinance banning the blowers in 1996.

Were her initials carved into the bark? The police log of the Huntington Beach Independent recently recounted that “a woman reported the theft of a pine tree in July, and Wednesday she said she found it in the 2500 block of Delaware Street.”

Couldn’t they be more specific? The crime log of Laguna Beach’s Coastline Pilot said that “police received four calls about an out-of-control, three-legged deer in the area.”

On the road: Rosemary LeForte of Huntington Beach came upon a back road in Hawaii that did not seem beloved by locals (see photo). Or was the editing of the sign a trick to keep tourists away?

Speaking of mysteries, Gordon Shaffer of Yorba Linda wasn’t sure about the meaning of the warning to motorists (or owls) that he saw in South Africa (see photo).

Cro-Magnon country: Mike Blumenthal of Monrovia noticed that the latest list of restaurants cited by the L.A. County Health Department included Hollywood’s Adult Cave. Its violation was “no potable water supply or no hot water.” Of course, I would think that primitive conditions would be part of the charm of a place with a name like that.

The Angels surprised most everyone: Several readers, including Tom Thomas, Pat Mooney and Jeff Krinock, noted that on Monday The Times published an ad from a department store that offered a free “commemorative World Series champion baseball” with “any $30 Giants’ purchase.”

I’m not perfect, either. I was wrong when I said that the annoying Fox-TV network ran commercials for a program called “24 Hours” countless times during the World Series. Actually, annoying Fox-TV ran commercials for a program called “2’ “countless times.

In case you missed it: Angel first baseman Scott Spiezio went to bat on TV’s “David Letterman Show,” narrating a list of the “Top Ten Things Overheard in the Angels Locker Room.” A selection: 10: “Mmm, this Rally Monkey is delicious.”

5: “Here’s to the California Angels ... or the Anaheim Angels or whatever the hell we are.”

And ...

1: The victory parade is Tuesday -- start thawing Walt!”

MiscelLAny: Just for the record, I’ll repeat that the urban myth is not true -- Walt Disney’s body was not frozen at his death in 1966. He was cremated and his remains were interred at Forest Lawn in Glendale.

Still the rumor lives on, bolstered by such comics as Paul Reiser, who observed during one Emmy broadcast that two networks (Westinghouse’s CBS and General Electric’s NBC) are owned by companies that sell freezers, while a third, ABC, is owned by a company “whose founder is in a freezer.”

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Steve Harvey can be reached at (800) LA-TIMES, ext. 77083, by fax at (213) 237-4712, by mail at Metro, L.A. Times, 202 W. 1st St., L.A. 90012 and by e-mail at steve.harvey@latimes.com