—Service with a smile: Maryland Heights police officer Erica Stough is a model cop's model cop. Police Chief Bill Carson needed almost eight minutes ahead of a recent City Council meeting to get through Stough's long list of good deeds and exemplary actions.

At her own expense, Stough purchased and installed a new carbon monoxide detector after determining during a house call that an elderly woman's detector wasn't working. She also bought a car seat for a mother who couldn't afford one for her infant child.

While on the beat, she helped take care of dogs so they wouldn't escape from their yards when their owners were hospitalized. When someone stole an elderly man's Minnie Pearl compact discs, she bought him some new ones, along with some food.

The list goes on and on. The words "above and beyond" don't come close to doing Officer Stough justice for her extraordinary service, which earned her the title of Officer of the Year among her 88 Maryland Heights colleagues.

—Pounds of snuggles: We've long believed that there is no more peaceful feeling than holding our 1,200-pound steer on our laps and petting it to soothe our troubled soul. As nervous travelers, we've been known to take our therapy steer with us onto airplanes.

No, wait ... those are therapy dogs. Therapy steers are something else altogether. The Post-Dispatch's Ashley Bahati Lime reports that plans are in the works for the five surviving bovines of the six that escaped from a north St. Louis packing house March 30 to be employed as therapy animals.

Of course, first they have to lose their well-founded fear of humans, and the Gentle Barn Animal Sanctuary has to raise $500,000 for a plot of land near St. Louis. And the steers have to be cajoled into standing still while those wanting to commune with them approach. So it's not a done deal. Those feeling an urgent need for solace might want to look into a hamster in the meantime.

—One down, 89 to go: Congratulations are in order. The tiny North County municipalities of Vinita Terrace and Vinita Park are now a single unit. The knot was officially tied this week after voters in November approved the merger. The bride, Vinita Terrace, will take the husband's name.

For the first time in recent memory, the number of St. Louis County municipalities is now less than 90 — 89 to be precise. The last municipality to go away was South County's St. George in 2012; before that it was Peerless Park at Interstate 44 and Highway 141, home of the late, lamented Wet Willy's Waterslide.

The Vinitas' was in effect a shotgun marriage, made necessary by changes in state law governing how much city revenue could be generated by traffic tickets. Absent a tax base, small cities have a hard time covering basic services.

We hope this is a sign of things to come. The ideal number of municipalities in St. Louis city and county is closer to one.

—There's a salute for this: If you thought that horrible driver tailgating behind you in a fancy car that cost more than your first house was a jerk, you're right. And now there is some scientific evidence to back you up.

Three studies over the past five years show that people who drive expensive cars are more likely to cut off other motorists, ride their bumpers and point at them with the middle digit. They're also less likely to stop for pedestrians in crosswalks.

"Money makes you more likely to exhibit the characteristics of being a jerk," says Paul Piff, a professor of psychology and social behavior at the University of California, Irvine, who has studied motorists.

The very rich — whom F. Scott Fitzgerald told us decades ago are "different from you and me" — aren't big on compassion. Piff says they are less willing to consider the perspective of another person and less concerned about others' well-being. They also equate being better off with actually being better.

—'Dance Moms' meets 'Orange is the New Black': Speaking of jerks, any fan of Lifetime's reality TV show "Dance Moms" will understand the pure, simple pleasure of seeing justice dealt to the blowhard, bullying star, Abby Lee Miller. For seven seasons, she barged around studios, berating young girls and playing favorites. She shouted down mothers and seemed utterly incapable of introspection about her ample roster of personal foibles. She looked like the last person to be running a youth dance company.

Abby, alas, found out this week that she's going to prison for having failed to declare $120,000 worth of Australian currency upon returning from a dance trip. She also was convicted of bankruptcy fraud for hiding $775,000 from bankruptcy creditors. It'll cost her a year and a day in prison.

Although cast members are publicly offering support, UsWeekly reports that, privately, many are delighted and asking why she couldn't have received a more severe sentence.

—Pepe the Frog croaks: We bid farewell to Pepe the Frog, who lived a laid-back life as a green anthropomorphic cartoon character created in 2005 by Matt Furie. He enjoyed a life of offbeat popularity until being kidnapped in 2015 by the racist alt-right movement.

So this week, to squelch the frenzy of hate, Furie put Pepe to death. There was a lot of cartoon drinking at his funeral. Sadly, the alt-right couldn't be buried with him.

REPRINTED FROM THE ST LOUIS POST DISPATCH