Odds and Ends

SILVERDALE, Wash. -- A Rotary Club has been left with a $7,000 bill for roasted duck, but this fowl was no fall-off-the-bone confit - it was a little more on the rubbery side.

A 25-foot inflatable rubber duck the club was using to promote a fund-raiser caught fire on Tuesday. Central Kitsap Fire and Rescue crews quickly put out the flames, but the fire left behind burned grass and "one melted duck," said spokeswoman Lindsy Ingram.

Witnesses reported seeing some young people leaving the area, Ingram said.

Race chairman Steve Slaton said the rented duck would cost about $7,600 to replace.

The duck was being used to advertise the 11th annual Great Kitsap Duck Race on July 26. Participants pay $5 to race normal-sized rubber ducks on Dyes Inlet and the proceeds are donated to charitable causes.

Club president Robert J. Cathcart said there were two more ducks on reserve.

"The other big ducks are still alive and well and very much uncooked," Cathcart said.

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FRANKLIN, Ohio -- William Fitzpatrick missed his first wedding anniversary because he was in boot camp. When he figured out he was going to miss the second while serving in Iraq, he wisely decided to do something special.

With the help of his father, the 23-year-old Marine hired an aircraft service to fly a banner over the home where his wife and son live.

The banner proclaimed in large words, "I love you Jennifer from Ray in Iraq."

On Tuesday, Fitzpatrick's father drove over to Jennifer's home and invited her and 2-year-old Hunter to walk down the street to a nearby park. Jennifer said on Thursday she didn't have a clue anything was up.

"Then we heard this noise, this plane, and we looked up and there it was - a big banner. When I saw the last three words, 'Ray in Iraq,' I got chills all over and knew right then what it was," Jennifer said.

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TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. -- Residents in northeastern Michigan have something to chew on now that the source of an outage in their long-distance phone service has been discovered.

A beaver is to blame, according to a spokesman for Verizon Communications.

The outage began shortly after 8 a.m. on Thursday and lasted about six hours. About 62,000 customers were affected, including long-distance, Internet and cellular phone services.

It took crews a while to locate the source of the problem because the damaged fiber optic cable was stretched across a wetland area near the headwaters of the Muskegon River, said spokesman John VanWyck.

The water level in the wetland had been lowered by the state Department of Natural Resources because of heavy rain in recent months, exposing the cable.

"From all indications, it appears a beaver picked it up and chewed it in half," VanWyck said. "I've heard of squirrels chewing aerial cable, but not this."

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COLUMBIA, Tenn. -- The credit for the bust is going to the bovines.

A tip on the whereabouts of Parker Ray Elliott, suspected of fatally shooting his ex-wife and daughter and wounding his son, had led authorities Monday to search near a Maury County farm.

"I saw four or five cows by a barn," said state parks employee Shane Petty, who was tracking Elliott with his bloodhound. "I knew those cows should have been looking at me, since I had just come into the area, but they were looking over into the woods, so I knew that's where he was."

Officers soon captured Elliott in those woods.

Petty said his college degree in agriculture helped him read the cattle's behavior.

"And I'm an old farm boy," he said.

A manhunt for Elliott had been under way since the shootings the previous week at his ex-wife's home in the Culleoka community, about 50 miles south of Nashville.