DRV SAFE PLS While You Try to Read Amusing Vanity License Plates

Southland motorists often use vanity plates to make terse traffic commentaries, such as HATE 405, HTE FWYS and PCH CLSD.

Another was recently posted on the www.knx1070.com Web site, which offers an honor roll of quirky plates submitted by listeners. The owner told the radio station her plate referred to the way drivers make the transition from the northbound San Diego Freeway to the Ventura.

It reads: HW RUDE.

Juggling jobs? In Mazatlan, Vanessa Deskin of Irvine spotted a couple of traffic cops who were performance artists, or was it the other way around (see photo).

Spinning right along ... : Wonder what the Mazatlan duo would have thought if they had encountered the character Hugh Margerum saw depicted in Santa Barbara? (see photo).

Another traffic oddity: In the Palisadian-Post, Warren Usui wrote a humor piece about seeing a “Humped PeLican l Crossing” sign in England -- and his efforts to find the beast. None of the locals could help him. And the creature wasn’t listed in any bird guidebooks. He eventually discovered that the warning was a sort of pun for an elevated pedestrian (“Pe”) light (“Li) controlled (“can”) crossing. (I didn’t say it was the funniest pun....).

I don’t want to be the one to find out: Mark Muir came upon a lost-pet notice in Burbank, which left me to wonder whether a one-eyed ferret would be more or less temperamental than the two-eyed variety (see photo).

Hey kids -- find out who your Dad is! That could be the theme of a fun science item I noticed (see accompanying).

Driving-away “oops!” events: “My then-18-year-old daughter was tooling around Lake Tahoe in her yellow Volkswagen bug, left her leather handbag on the roof and didn’t miss it for many miles,” writes Joanne Kennedy. “The end of the story came 18 months later when I got a call from a park ranger who had found the bag in some bushes and at first glance thought it was a body.

“Being a kind soul, he also told me they had inventoried the contents, which covered 3 1/2 pages of 8-by-11 single line notebook paper.”

Added Kennedy: “Times change. Now all she carries are credit cards.”

MiscelLAny: Divorce Magazine’s Southern California edition -- yes, there really is such a publication -- reported that a wife in Taiwan was granted a divorce because “she wouldn’t share the marriage bed with her husband’s cat.” I don’t want to get into the specifics of the problem, but Divorce Magazine advises Southland readers that “if you have a pet sharing your bed with your spouse, make sure the pet is potty-trained.” Especially if it’s a ferret.

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Steve Harvey can be reached at (800) LA-TIMES, Ext. 77083.