Firefighters Had a Bone to Pick With Dog Owner

In their new book, “First Responders Handbook of Humor,” Dan Jordan and John Hicks recall the time that L.A. city firefighter Leo Byrne answered a call about a 3-year-old male who was having trouble breathing.

Byrne and his partner arrived by ambulance and were told the patient was on the couch in the living room. The pair rushed into the room “only to discover a 50-year-old male and an approximately 3-year-old dog sitting on the couch.”

The dog “had apparently swallowed a chicken bone and began choking,” the authors wrote. “After taking a quick assessment, including lung sounds (at least Byrne thought he was listening to the lungs), they quickly canceled the paramedic ambulance that was responding with them.”

The dog, by the way, seemed fine. Byrne suggested that the 50-year-old might want to take the 3-year-old to a vet.

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A tailor would have to use a saw: Pauline Fox of Palm Desert wondered whether one very stiff jacket she saw advertised “would need to be varnished” (see accompanying).

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What do you expect in this heat?: Near the Beverly Center, Frank Liu saw a warning about some workers who were taking it easy (see photo).

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Ill gains?: It’s tough enough finding a parking place and then, when you do, it’s guarded by a parking meter with a foreboding sticker, as Phil Proctor of Beverly Hills discovered (see photo).

On the subject of disabled meters, students and others at USC learn that if they park at one they’ll pay a stiff price (see photo). That’s right; if USC can’t get a couple of quarters for a parking place, the school will just shut it down.

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L.A.’s the place, all right: On www.craigslist.com, George Lissauer of Mar Vista saw an ad placed by someone wanting a “crash course on driving.”

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Turning to the weather: I mentioned how reader Mardy Wilkins has heard meteorological terms so many times on the TV news that she has begun to imagine them as people -- Coastal Eddy, a gambler; Onshore Flo, a cafe owner in Culver City; and May Gray, a Montrose beautician.

There’s also June Gloom, that snooty socialite.

And Bonnie Sloane of L.A. points out I forgot Catalina Eddy (though I think that’s just an alias Coastal Eddy uses when he’s piled up heavy gambling losses).

Finally, David Macaray says the cast for our daily drama would be incomplete without one high-living character, Jet Stream, not to mention a boozy down-on-his-luck beachcomber, Patchy Fog.

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miscelLAny: Los Angeles magazine reports that a plaque at the Trousdale Estates mansion of singer and occasional bat-biter Ozzy Osbourne says:

“Never mind the dog. Beware of the owner.”

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Steve Harvey can be reached at (800) LATIMES, 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.