The Show Tampa

“Oh, yes, it’s beautiful!” declares Hodges, a snowbird retiree from Memphis, Tenn. who prefers the moniker Prince Mongo. “It’s absolutely gorgeous.”

And it’s his own personal protest.

Upset at complaints by neighbors over a wood deck that prompted county officials to cite him for a code violation, he transformed a $300,000 beachside home into a wildly provocative property that stands out as much as he does.

Prince Mongo, who eagerly tells you he is 333 and from the planet Zambodia, joins the colorful cast of other Central Florida characters who used their homes as a canvas for protest, to the point of becoming neighborhood nuisances.

The late Grover Walker painted his Winter Park home a wild red, white and blue, with massive slogans and a giant American flag flying upside-down on a 90-foot flagpole. The family hosted concerts and rallies, with loudspeakers, sirens and military surplus spotlights to protest a psychiatric diagnosis that barred him from receiving veterans benefits. Seminole County’s “junkman,” Alan Wayne Davis, went to prison rather than removingantique aircraft parts and a giant sculpture of a human buttocks from his yard near Altamonte Springs.

WEST PALM BEACH, Florida (AP) — Florida’s first python hunting seasonends Saturday with no reptiles being reported captured and killed.

The season opened March 8 for anyone with a hunting license who paid a $26 permit fee to hunt down the nonnative reptiles on state-managed lands around the Everglades in South Florida.

In addition to Burmese pythons, hunters also were allowed to kill Indian and African rock pythons, and green anacondas and Nile monitor lizards.

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission says no snakes were caught. FWC officials say the state’s unseasonably cold winter weather is believed to have killed up to 50 percent of the pythons. The public hunt will resume in the fall.

Officials believe there could be tens of thousands of pythons around the Everglades.

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In the hopes of avoiding a local holy war, Miami-Dade Transit is stripping ads from buses that they say may be offensive to Muslims.

The ads, plastered on 10 county buses on Tuesday, urged followers to leave the Islamic faith, according to the Miami Herald.

“Fatwa on your head? Is your family or community threatening you? Leaving Islam?” the ads asked. “Got questions? Get answers!”

The ads were sponsored by Stop the Islamization of America, a New York-based religious freedom group, which said they were a response to ads which promote Islam.

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Aweful but reality. What are we telling todays youth when they see this.

To some in NFL circles, the former Florida State star’s decision to put football on hold for a year while studying at one of the world’s foremost academic institutions — not to mention his plans to become a neurosurgeon — indicates a lack of commitment to the game, and Rolle is aware of this.

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