Her abject misery evident, the child is forced to model the "cute summer outfit" destined to be purchased for some richer child.

The pastor of a Kentucky church that handles snakes in religious rites was among 10 people arrested by wildlife officers in a crackdown on the venomous snake trade.

More than 100 snakes, many of them deadly, were confiscated in the undercover sting after Thursday's arrests, said Col. Bob Milligan, director of law enforcement for Kentucky Fish and Wildlife.

Most were taken from the Middlesboro home of Gregory James Coots, including 42 copperheads, 11 timber rattlesnakes, three cottonmouth water moccasins, a western diamondback rattlesnake, two cobras and a puff adder.

Handling snakes is practiced in a handful of fundamentalist churches across Appalachia, based on the interpretation of Bible verses saying true believers can take up serpents without being harmed. The practice is illegal in most states, including Kentucky.

Coots, 36, is pastor of the Full Gospel Tabernacle in Jesus Name in Middlesboro, where a Tennessee woman died after being bitten by a rattlesnake during a service in 1995. Her husband died three years later when he was bitten by a snake in northeastern Alabama.

Coots was charged Thursday with buying, selling and possessing illegal reptiles. He had no listed telephone number and couldn't be reached for comment. There was no phone listing for the church.

"It is disturbing to me that individuals would keep such dangerous wildlife in their homes and in neighborhoods where they put their families, visitors and neighbors at such high risk," Milligan said.

The snakes, plus one alligator, were turned over to the nonprofit Kentucky Reptile Zoo in Slade. Most appeared to have been captured from the wild, with some imported from Asia and Africa.

I resent him bringing in that puff adder. The local venomous snakes aren't good enough for Sunday meetings? Next thing they'll be importing grits from Taiwan.

James Dowdy has gone to prison three times, and may go there again, for the same crime: burglarizing homes and stealing women's socks.

Dowdy had been free on bond in one alleged sock caper when police say he was caught with socks that had been taken from someone's laundry room Monday morning in Belleville. Dowdy, 36, remained jailed Wednesday on a felony burglary count filed the previous day.

Dowdy's mother, Linda, said he needs to be institutionalized to get psychiatric treatment for the fixation she says has tormented him most of his life. She thinks the fetish took hold when he clung to some of her socks as keepsakes when he was forced to live for a year with his dad as a child.

"He cries to me all the time, `Mom, I hate myself. I'd rather be dead than live like this,"' the 59-year-old mother, her voice cracking, told The Associated Press. "He doesn't hurt anybody, and he never takes anything of value. He takes nothing but socks."

Police have said there's no evidence Dowdy has ever threatened anyone in his apparently single-minded quest for socks, almost always the female variety. But on Wednesday, police Capt. Don Sax said that while Dowdy is "obviously a guy with a problem," authorities have run out of patience.

"I'm sorry, I don't personally have any sympathy for him anymore," Sax said. "He's been doing this long enough, he's been out of jail plenty long enough, that he could have easily gone out and sought help for whatever problem he has."

In 1994, Dowdy was sentenced to three years in prison for trying to burglarize a home, ultimately getting caught by police with a bag of socks.

"I know what I did was wrong," he told the judge during sentencing for that crime. "And the thing with the socks, I would like to get help with it so I can get over it, get it out of my life and get on with my life."

In 1997, however, Dowdy got a six-year sentence for breaking into another woman's home and stealing socks. In 2004, he was sentenced to seven years in prison after pleading guilty to attempted residential burglary, a felony reportedly tied to his strolling into a female neighbor's home for her socks.

Last year, witnesses in Dowdy's neighborhood reported seeing a suspicious person slinking about, at times peeking through windows. Often, police said, socks were left behind, though it's unclear whether the culprit dropped them clumsily or as a calling card.

Police responding to one of the reports saw Dowdy -- who fit the description of the man reported by neighbors -- trying to crawl into his house through a basement window, socks in one hand and a flashlight in the other.

Charges of attempted burglary and disorderly conduct are pending. Dowdy's court-appointed public defender in that case declined to discuss the man's legal troubles Wednesday.

Early Monday, a man told police he saw a stranger crawling out of his basement window after his 15-year-old daughter heard someone downstairs. Sax said police dogs led officers to the house where Dowdy lives with his mother, and socks taken from the caller's basement laundry room were found in his bedroom.

Sax credited the victim -- a homeowner who owns guns -- with staying levelheaded and not confronting the burglar. Police and Dowdy's mother fear that luck may not hold up.

"I told the police officer the other night they're going to call me in the middle of the night to identify my son's body because somebody's going to shoot him," Linda Dowdy said. "And in all honesty, I can't blame that person because I would be trying to protect my home, too."

Still, she added, "I'd like for somebody to look at him as a human being and not a monster. He's not a bad kid, he's really not. He just has a problem."

Amazing how a kid's psycho-sexual development can get so hosed.

A woman charged in the drunken-driving death of her son went to a bar after his funeral instead of reporting back to jail, state police said.

A judge had given Erin Howard, 26, of Corry, permission to leave the Erie County Prison for 24 hours to attend her son's funeral in Ohio, with orders to return to the lockup by 3 p.m. Saturday.

Instead, Howard went to a bar in Hamilton, Ohio, about a mile from the church where the funeral for 6-year-old Samuel Carpenter was held, police said.

Calls to Howard's public defender went unanswered after business hours Monday.

Howard had been in prison in lieu of $75,000 bail on charges that she was driving drunk when she crashed into a creek bank near Corry, killing Samuel on June 14 — her 26th birthday.

Pennsylvania police found out Sunday morning that Howard had been arrested in Ohio after her son's father allegedly tipped off authorities to her whereabouts. She was being held in Ohio awaiting extradition to Erie.

Howard has now been charged with escape in addition to involuntary manslaughter, drunken driving, child endangerment and other charges related to the crash.

By the time police hauled her out of the bar, she was already nine hours past due for heading back from her furlough. I bet the sob story about the kid was getting her massive free rounds.

When firefighters rushed Steuart Baker's mother to the hospital in May 2005, he never expected anyone to sue her.

Elizabeth Baker, now 84, has moved into an assisted-living facility. But her son continues trying to fend off the lawsuit filed against his mother by a firefighter-emergency medical technician with Lake County Fire Rescue.

Jennifer Roland claims she suffered back and neck injuries when the front left wheel of a fire engine broke through the lid of an old septic tank in front of Elizabeth Baker's house in Mount Dora.

The lawsuit, filed a year ago in Circuit Court, seeks unspecified damages of more than $15,000.

From the start, Steuart Baker said, he's been upset that a paramedic would sue a patient.

"Police officers, firemen, paramedics are public servants," he said.

"If I call a paramedic and they hurt themselves they'll sue me? That wasn't how public service was intended."

I predict this will all end badly for Miss Roland, but she should keep a positive attitude about her post-paramedic life and hopefully one day she'll find that severed finger in a bowl of restaurant chili she's been dreaming of.