Valdosta, GA (LP).

Two policemen in a cruising patrol car were surprised at 2:30 early yesterday morning to see a homeowner with a sawed-off shotgun holding a pizza delivery man at bay on the former's front porch in a local up-scale neighborhood.

"Thank goodness you've come," chorused both the homeowner and the pizza man in unison. Just minutes before the police made their serendipitous arrival, the homeowner, a retired university professor, had been yelling into the house for his wife to set the dog loose, to call 911, and to bring a mop. The pizza man had soiled himself on the professor's front porch after coming face to face with the foreshortened shotgun.

Police quickly took charge of the scene and determined the facts. The incident began in mid-afternoon the previous day when the pizza delivery man, a mentally challenged resident of the group home on Shaker Road, had missed his ride on the short bus at the end of his "school day" at the neighborhood training site. Walking home, as he often had to do, he stopped in at a local pizza parlor and applied for a job, rather than admit to the counterman that he had no money to buy a pizza.

"hel_l, he looked as bright as any of my other delivery boys," said Junior Junior, the pizza parlor's manager. "He said he could drive a car, so I lent him mine. That's how he got hired. I had no idea that he was going to pick a wrong house number and ring the doorbell of a completely dark house at 2:30 in the morning! My store is definitely not responsible for this. No way!"

Police confiscated the shotgun from the professor and called for an ambulance to transport the delivery man to the local Medical Center for treatment of an apparently serious dog bite in the groin area. All the while protesting "Anybody would have done the same thing to have his peace disturbed in the middle of the night by some blithering idiot," the professor was handcuffed, taken to jail, and charged with felonious assault with a deadly weapon, dog baiting, and $17.85 for the pizza which he didn't order.

"All's well that ends well," said the professor's wife, waving to her husband as the squad car turned the corner.

edited: to remove hidden line feeds

Thats funny plus it probably is true