On May 16, 10 prisoners ranging in age from 19 to 42, variously convicted of murder, aggravated assault with a firearm and domestic abuse battery, broke into a handicap cell at the maximum security Louisiana State Penitentiary. There they removed a metal toilet unit and left through a rectangular hole, which led to a walkway and out to a loading dock.

The men took the time to scrawl a drawing, an obscenity or two and a message on the wall on their way out: “To Easy LoL.” And it seems they had time to spare; their escape was not noticed for at least seven hours. Two of them are still on the lam.

Grant Hardin, 56, a former police chief dubbed “the Devil in the Ozarks,” escaped the Calico Rock prison in Arkansas on May 25. Hardin was serving time for two violent crimes: the 1997 rape of an elementary school teacher and the 2017 murder of a Gateway city employee.

Hardin was was already in prison for murder when he was charged with raping the school teacher at gun point two decades earlier, in 1997. According to news sources, the crime lab eventually found DNA traces on the teacher’s sweatshirt and matched the DNA to Hardin.

Hardin’s escape was discovered after just 20 minutes, but the fact that it was raining heavily at the time, and Hardin’s knowledge of police and prison procedures as well as familiarity with the surrounding terrain, which is heavily forested, with rivers and many caves, makes his trail difficult to follow, according to law enforcement.

As I type this column on my laptop, I keep getting distracted by some clickbait story about a little girl who discovered an “unnatural animal,” a cross between a gila monster and a tortoise according to a veterinarian, in her yard near a festering swamp. Is that possible?

You always have unanswered questions when you’re reading news stories, details you wonder about. Like, why did it take two decades to match Hardin’s DNA? That doesn’t sound like cutting edge technology.

“Time was on our side,” said Rogers Police Chief Hayes Minor.

But I don’t think so. You wouldn’t think it would have taken 20 years, would you?

Yes, and why is Harding called the devil in the Ozarks? Who says? Since when? Is it a life-long moniker or just some label slapped on him by the press?

I can sympathize with Louisiana and Ozark residents, who are probably freaking out at this writing. Ten years ago, two men escaped from the Clinton prison in Dannemora, New York, making everyone in our vicinity pretty edgy until they were found.

News people based in New York City described our Upstate location as “remote, isolated, farthest north New York,” and mentioned that there are coyotes.

“If they’re camping out, coyotes are the least of their problems. It’s the blackflies and mosquitoes and no-see-ums that’re gonna eat them alive,” my friend Foozie commented, voicing the general consensus.

“Have they checked the Noon Mark Diner?” someone asked on Facebook, presumably harking back to an occasion when a local father and son were arrested there while eating breakfast a couple of days after robbing a bank in Plattsburgh.

Another friend said spunkily that she had a gun, as well as a little barky warning dog. Quite a few people seemed to be placing their faith in their dogs, which in my opinion was nice but optimistic, knowing their dogs. Luckily it never came to that.

According to artificial intelligence (AI): No, it is not possible for tortoises and Gila monsters to crossbreed.

And even if it were, how would a gila monster and a tortoise meet up? What would a gila monster be doing in the neighborhood of a fetid swamp? Gilas live in deserts; and tortoises, unlike turtles, are not swamp dwellers.

So even if a gila monster was, say, an escaped pet in Florida, where you’re always hearing about people buying exotic pets like Burmese python constrictor snakes, African clawed frogs, crocodiles and Nile monitor and iguana lizards and then thinking better of it and setting them free in the everglades and Florida Keys, where they grow to enormous size and eat all the native wildlife — what would a tortoise and a gila monster even see in each other?

Have a good week.

(Martha Allen, of Keene Valley, has been writing for the News since 1996.)