One of the more bizarre footnotes of...

One of the more bizarre footnotes of the primary campaign was the discovery by Long Beach City Council candidate Jim Serles that his cat Pug had been wrapped in bumper stickers advertising his opponent, Doug Drummond.

The Drummond forces deny complicity. Serles, who lost the election, said Friday that Pug, a long-haired Persian, required a shave but has otherwise recovered from the indignity.

The Los Angeles Police Department’s West L.A. station received a call from a Westwood woman complaining that a dog had left a mess on her lawn.

Not just any dog. An LAPD dog.

Police were able to mollify the caller by informing her that the animal had snared a robbery suspect a few minutes earlier.

And, finally, in today’s last installment of All Creatures Great, Small and Weird:

When Universal Studios announced it was holding a Tuesday audition for horses to star in a Western stunt show, the phone calls started pouring in.

“We heard from a lady with a ‘Houdini Horse’--she said it can escape from anything,” reported publicist Jim Yeager.

“Another said her horse ‘can act like a dog.’ I said what does that mean? She said, ‘He likes to dig for trash.’ Then I heard from an old vaudeville agent who’d had an act with two guys inside a horse suit. I said that that sounded interesting. And he said, ‘No, you idiot. They’re dead.’ What he has now is an act with a horse inside a horse suit.”

The latest issue of Adweek carries this item in its “Account Acquisitions” column:

“MaritWard Design/Production, Sherman Oaks, picked up Mike Glickman Realty, LA.”

Quite a challenge--marketing a bankrupt Realtor.

Amid the controversy over whether a refurbished Olvera Street should reflect the role of the Chinese and the Italians, Nini Cutter of Sherman Oaks wonders whether anyone’s aware of the contributions of the French in early L.A.

Pioneers from that nation arrived in the late 1850s and were so apprehensive about the wild little pueblo that they requested, and received, a unit of the French Foreign Legion for protection for several years.

In 1860, the residents banded together into the French Society, a fraternal group, and founded French Hospital in what is now Chinatown. One of the oldest hospitals in the city, it was recently purchased by a group of investors who renamed it the Pacific Alliance Center.

A 53-year-old statue of Joan of Arc still stands in front of the hospital on College Street.

“If that statue is crated away, the very last historic vestige of the French colony will be gone,” writes Cutter, a member of the still-existing French Society.

A hospital spokesperson said that the new owners have not decided what to do with the Maid of Orleans.

Good thing for Esquire magazine that Joan of Arc isn’t still around. The June issue of the magazine features a guide titled, “Your Wife, An Owner’s Manual.” The L.A. chapter of the National Organization for Women, which is very much around, says it will begin a letter-writing campaign to protest the story.

In City Hall, which should be leading the fight for water conservation, Larry Kaplan of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce spotted this hand-written sign in one bathroom:

“Water-saving toilet. Flush twice.”

miscelLAny:

County Supervisor Kenneth Hahn, who led the fight to have emergency phones installed on local freeways, has a model in his office.