For no apparent reason, someone dumped thousands, and we mean thousands of shoes on Miami's Palmetto Expressway, causing massive backups during the morning rush hour.

Road workers equipped with shovels, front end loaders and trucks worked throughout the morning to clean up the mess, but no source for the footwear flotsam has been determined. Police are looking for a charity to take the shoes, and we're pretty excited, as the offbeat news cache for 2009 is already getting off to a great start. [Yahoo]

Send an email to Ben, the author of this post, at ben@jalopnik.com.