A Florida Walmart Gets Aired Out by Airboat

Read the episode (Narration script)

Good morning. Let's begin at a Walmart.

On Wednesday in Oldsmar, Florida, firefighters were inside a Walmart on a medical call when their monitor picked up high levels of carbon monoxide. Fox 13 reports that everyone was evacuated. The fire chief believes the source was welding work done in the store overnight.

That left the question of how you air out a Walmart. The Tampa Free Press reports that the standard fans weren't up to a building that size. So the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Marine Unit drove over from the next county with airboats. An airboat is a flat boat with an airplane propeller on the back, built for crossing swamps. Deputies backed one up to the front doors and opened the throttle.

One onlooker said you could "hear the fix." It's the rare emergency where somebody said "get the boat" about a parking lot and was right.

In Queensland, Australia, the state government needs a piece of land for a train station upgrade, and it can't find anyone who owns it. ABC News reports the block is sixteen meters long and sixty centimeters wide. That's about fifty feet by two feet. It's real estate you can step over.

It belongs to the estate of August Thorsborne, who ran a soft drink factory and sat on the local council in eighteen eighty-eight. He had eleven children. No heir has been found, even though the street next to the station is named Thorsborne Street. Anyone with a claim has until Tuesday to object. Bring a tape measure. It won't take long.

In Japan, a yakuza boss sued the country's expressway companies for discrimination, and this week he lost. Japan's toll roads are phasing out cash, and the electronic toll card isn't available to members of organized crime.

So in twenty twenty-three, according to the Asahi Shimbun, he applied for one anyway. The form includes a statement that the applicant is not a gang member. He crossed that line out, filled in everything else correctly, and sent it in. He was rejected a month later. You can say a lot about the man, but he did not lie on the form.

The Fukuoka District Court found the burden on him limited, since, as SoraNews24 put it, other roads exist. One commenter online offered a simpler ruling: "Just walk then." So a crime boss will be taking surface streets and stopping at every light.

In Tyler, Texas, the Caldwell Zoo has answered a petition saying its Halloween decorations were too scary for small children. UPI reports the petition describes "simulated mutilated body parts, headless figures, menacing characters hanging from trees, and towering skeletons." It was launched on October thirty-first, which is late in the season to bring it up. The zoo says the feedback "will be taken into account for future events." They have about a year.

In Tasmania, the James Boag brewery closed this month after a hundred and forty-five years. ABC News reports the last carton it produced, stamped "last Tassie carton," was auctioned at a gathering of former workers. A case normally costs about seventy Australian dollars. This one went for thirteen hundred.

The buyer, Sam Cox, spent fourteen years as the brewery's electrician. His main rival was the band playing the event, which was bidding its pay for the gig. The band lost, so they went home with their money, which is rare for a band. Cox isn't going to drink it. It's going on display in his lounge room, and he'd like it known that he has good security cameras.

In Pelzer, South Carolina, sheriff's deputies spent part of Saturday trying to lasso an emu beside a highway. UPI reports the body camera video shows the lasso missing, and a deputy saying, "I heard their claws are real sharp." So they boxed it in with patrol cars, a neighbor brought chicken feed, and everyone waited for a local man with emu-wrangling experience, who gently wrestled the bird to the ground. Pelzer has an emu guy. Most towns don't find out until they need one.

Over on AskReddit, someone asked for the adult version of finding out Santa doesn't exist.

One person got theirs at a military funeral, where the bugler had a device inside his bugle. The soldier explained, "That is what plays taps, I don't actually play it." Someone who worked at a federal cemetery replied that they were thankful for the devices, because some of the live players were awful.

A fifty-five-year-old said that in a crisis their first thought is to find the competent adult in the room, and then they notice everyone looking at them. They described themselves as "three raccoons in a trenchcoat." Others kept it short. "Strippers don't really like you." And: "That there are no hot singles waiting to meet me."

Another thread asked people who've worked in reality TV for the biggest lie viewers believe.

A lighting tech who did two seasons of Wife Swap said directors would tell families, "okay we want you to argue over the color of the sofa, just get wild with it." The sofa was beige.

One commenter's friend went on My Cat from Hell with two cats who hated each other. The finale was edited so they looked like best friends. They were not, and one was eventually rehomed. Even the cats got a storyline.

And someone attended a noon taping of America's Got Talent. There was one act, a man knocking down dominoes, about a minute long. Then the audience was recorded applauding acts that didn't exist, for two hours. They'd have left, but the doors were locked and the show had their phones.

Alright guys, That’s all I have for you today. Have a great day. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow!