I can't go outside. I have to spend the weekend indoors, maybe next week, too. I'd go outside, but the BIG SNARLING CAT might eat me.

Let me explain: I live in Texas, where we've given up on having zoos because the wildlife that walks up and helps itself to your picnic lunch is far more exotic and interesting than some gazelle or chimpanzee.

I hear some of you out there snickering, saying to yourselves, "Ha! He's got nothing! Dave Barry's already told us all that Florida wildlife is the most pernicious and terrifying of all!"

Is Florida home to the fire ant, which can turn an innocent day at the park into a week of blistering horror? No. Did killer bees start out in Florida? No. Florida has, what, palmetto bugs and manatees? Terrifying.

If this Barry fellow squawks, I'll match a shoebox full of Texas wildlife against a shoebox full of his pun Florida critters. It won't be pretty.

Thursday of this week, rumors began to circulate of a "big cat" prowling a subdivision near an elementary school within shouting distance of my apartment. The usual array of alarmed parents demanding that "something must be done" was interviewed, along with the other usual array of squinty-eye lawman types, assuring the public that, based on their wide knowledge of exotic animals, "everything would be fine."

A resident of the neighborhood, who apparently has some issues of his own being as how he's festooned the outside of his home with surveillance cameras, reported that he'd caught the prowling ferocious feline on tape, stalking his property at night. This tape was immediately confiscated by law enforcement and treated with greater care than Colin Powell's latest Iraqi snapshots.

After great hubbub, no little hooraw, and even a modicum of hullabaloo, the local authorities announced that the animal in question was ... a bobcat.

The bobcat, felis rufus, stands at max 2 feet tall and weighs in at roughly 20 pounds. I've had house cats almost that size.

Fortunately, by this point a fellow who DID have some experience with arrived to take control and told the shocked assemblage that *gasp* NOTHING WOULD BE DONE. No traps. No poison. No land mines. No poison gas.

As the wildlife-savvy fellow explained, "This is his natural territory. We're encroaching on it. If folks have concerns about small pets, I'd suggest they keep them inside."

Wait. Did I REALLY just hear that? A representative of humankind WILLINGLY ceding a small corner of his domain to a fellow predator? Will wonders never cease.

In any event, it's a cold, wet, miserable weekend outside, so the giant cat gives me a good excuse to stay in. Here are a few humans who make me think it might be a good idea to just board up the windows and give the whole hermit thing a try.

Can You See The Clues?

From Florida, the land of tiny wildlife, comes some tiny-brained criminals. In the Sunshine State town of Jupiter, a gang of thieves has apparently branched out into a rather specific sort of theft: eyeglasses. The owner of 20/20 Optical was the latest victim, finding his lifelong dream of owning an eyeglass store loaded into boxes and taken away by these myopic thugs.

One Pearle Vision store in the area has been wiped out four times. Hey, folks, it might be time for an alarm system ... a big dog ... longshoremen with tire irons.

The crime is a heinous one, to be sure, and it's a sad thing any time a dream dies ... but an EYEGLASS store? What happened to dreaming about being a fireman? Perhaps, being severely astigmatized myself, I've just got a latent aversion to the places.

Art Appreciation

Across the country, in Bakersfield, Calif., art appreciation appears to have taken on a new wrinkle. According to police, Shane Michael Walton was found rampaging through the Kern County Museum wearing only a top hat and cape.

Police said Walton was rolling around in a wheelchair used as a prop by the museum for historical skits. The cape and hat were props as well, officials said.

The hardest part of this to believe may be that, according to officers, Walton was stone cold sober while he was doing $20,000 in damage to the museum collection.

This could be HUGE, friends! If we can find out what undetectable substance Walton ingested that made the whole top hat-wheelchair-bash the museum thing sound like a good idea, we'll all be richer than Croesus. Is it some new mushroom? A new plant species? Something growing on the grounds of Neverland Ranch?

Knit One, Plow Eight

Bystanders in Miami Beach, Fla., were shocked recently to see a car traveling nearly 100 mph plow into a van filled with elderly passengers, injuring eight of them. It was what happened next that truly got their attention, though.

According to police, the 61-year-old driver of the offending car fled the vehicle, and when onlookers caught up with her she sat down in the highway median and began knitting.

There's an interior dialogue here that just screams from the photo: "OK, hit the van. Act normally. They won't notice you. Get the needles and the yarn, knit the victims a nice sweater. Just say you're a rescue worker."

I'm sure Dave Barry would say Florida wildlife had something to do with this, but I'm betting it's more attributable to the same unknown substance our California art lover was ingesting. I think I'm going to call it Stupidium. It's a new element for the periodic table.

As ever, I look forward to hearing from all of you, or as many of you as haven't had your computer time taken away by the warden. Drop me a line anytime!