We’ve all heard stories about the strange phone calls the good folks at 911 call centers across the country receive from time to time.

There was the irate woman who called 911 because McDonald’s ran out of chicken nuggets, stretching the definition of what constitutes an emergency. (Now, if they were out of fries, that’d be a legitimate call.)

There was the guy out in California who called their emergency services because he had gotten high, walked too far from his home and now needed them to come pick him up and take him to Taco Bell.

And then there was the truly amazing individual who called in to a 911 center somewhere who was worried he was “turning into a werewolf” and told the dispatcher that he “needed some Pepto Bismol immediately.” (Of all the literature I’ve read, never knew you could cure werewolfism with Pepto. Good to know.)

I had the opportunity to meet a bridesmaid at a wedding in Tampa this weekend who worked in a similar sort of police call center for crime tips, and had to ask her if there were a disproportionate amount of truly crazy phone calls that came through their system.

Her response – “You bet we do.”

There was the woman who called back multiple times in one day because she wanted the police to come and get her keys and wallet out of the tree in her yard.

When informed that wasn’t a service offered by the police, she demanded to be connected to the fire department, who also promptly told her that wasn’t a service they offered either.

To this day, we still don’t know how or why those items got into the tree.

There was the lady who called frantically several times one day to report that the lemon cookies she had bought from the local Walmart tasted bad and she swore up and down that someone had added an unwanted ingredient to them: urine.

When asked if she had tried to take them back to the store or talk to a manager about that issue, she said she refused to and thought the police should handle the matter completely.

When informed that the police really didn’t look into matters like that, she promptly went to the police department’s website and filed an anonymous tip about the incident, referring to it as an “assault.” I’ve heard of bad food being an “assault on the taste buds,” but this lady took it too far.

And, finally, there was the time their group got a phone call from a business in a town several hours away to inform them about a local resident they needed to look out for.

Apparently, he had left his job abruptly and told them he was leaving to move to Iowa to join “ISIS.”

Obviously, this raised a few red flags, so she ran it up the flagpole to a contact at Homeland Security, who was able to shed some light on the matter a few weeks later.

Law enforcement officials tailed the guy for several days, saying that he appeared to be a normal guy but they said the tip was correct that he was, in fact, moving to Iowa and appeared to be joining a group there.

ICSS – the Iowa City School System.

Cliff McCollum is managing editor of Gulf Coast Media. He can be reached at cliff@gulfcoastmedia.com.