Off and Running in Seal Beach

And they’re off and running! The police log of the Los Alamitos News-Enterprise reported this call from a Seal Beach resident: “Ocean Avenue, 9:19 a.m.: A black horse was running loose on the beach.”

End of item. Did it really happen or had the resident consumed too many margaritas at a Main Street bar?

I strolled into the city’s lifeguard station to find out. Instead of being laughed at, I was told that a horse had indeed broken loose from a circus that was camping in the area. It had been captured after a few minutes but not before a citizen phoned police.

I felt relieved that the animal was no longer running free. I live in nearby Long Beach. Traffic’s wild enough there as it is.

THE NEXT BEST THING TO A PINK ELEPHANT: Verification of the horse-on-the-beach item also restored my faith in eyewitnesses in Seal Beach. Two years ago, a resident claimed that a heavily damaged pink Corvette was stranded along a local pier and being pounded by waves.

Officers sped to the scene and found nothing. When the resident still insisted the Corvette was there, the police visited his beachfront home.

It turned out that the man had a new high-powered telescope, which he hadn’t quite figured out how to operate. He actually had it trained on a Barbie-sized toy Corvette, less than a foot long. Containing no driver.

OTHER WILDLIFE SIGHTINGS: Good thing that the captors of Evelyn, the gorilla who escaped from her enclosure at the L.A. Zoo, weren’t distracted by this blurb in the Seal Beach Sun:

“A man in his 40s was digging in the dirt for an hour and acting like a monkey.”

FOLLOW THESE EASY DIRECTIONS: If you’re feeling disoriented lately, you’re not alone. Consider these sign-makers (see photos).

In Walnut, Donna Pearson of Glendora discovered you’re taking your life in your hands if you try to drive to Mt. San Antonio College.

Neil Cuadra of L.A. came upon some signs that are as mixed up as USC’s football team, which plays at the Coliseum across the street.

Finally, Marti Scott of Huntington Beach alerted me to a satire of a guidepost in Temecula. Snapped by Corinne Carey, it’s displayed in the “Top 10 Road Signs” gallery on the humor Web site attrition.org (https://www.attrition.org/gallery/signs/t10signs.jpg).

SPEAKING OF DIRECTIONS: Ron Harris of West Hollywood and Craig Cryer of Hermosa Beach note that the local Voter Information Booklet says it can’t vouch for the spelling of the candidates. And its own spelling? (See accompanying.)

MAKE MY DAY: The Leisure World newspaper’s “Security Activity Report” said:

“A resident in Mutual 3, visiting in Mutual 10, used a garden hose full force in an attempt to slow down vehicular traffic.”

miscelLAny:

You never know where you’re going to find a lawyer joke. In the magazine Pepperdine Law, professor Richard R. Lynn says: “I always told law students that being admitted to the Supreme Court is like wearing a tuxedo--you feel better about yourself for no reason.”

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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.

DONNA PEARSON

MARTI SCOTT