Keeping Lethal Animals In Your House Just Might Leave A Mark

...and...the Sun is there.

 

A MAN who lived in his own "zoo" of lizards and insects was fatally bitten by a pet black widow spider — then eaten by the other creepy-crawlies.

Police broke in to Mark Voegel's apartment to find spider Bettina along with 200 others, several snakes, a gecko lizard called Helmut and several thousand termites had gorged on his body.

Neighbours alerted police after becoming alarmed by the stink.

And horrified officers were met by a nightmare scene.

Interesting story, indeed.

 

Victim:  Are you trying to tell me that keeping a bunch of dangerous spiders, venomous snakes, and poisionous frogs and toads in my house is a bad idea, somehow?

 

Observer with common sense:

  

 

 

Ah.  The thing that I love most about the world is a diversity of ideas.  Mostly bad ones, but ideas nonetheless.

Public Service Announcement

In keeping with Earth Day, that I've decided to stretch out into a kind of Earth Week, because, well, the Earth is kind of important to, you know, the survival of humankind, just in case you didn't know this (and apparently, there are a lot of you out there), plastic isn't a product of magic, or some such: plastic comes from oil.

 

Plastics are everywhere and most Americans have come to rely on plastics in all aspects of their lives. However, very few people realize that plastics are made from oil, further contributing to the problems of energy dependence, greenhouse gas emissions and depleting resources. In fact, nearly 10 percent of U.S. oil consumption - approximately 2 million barrels a day - is used to make plastic.

 

From Yahoo News.  I come not to mock, simply to enlighten.

 

Plastic is made from oil, people.  The more plastic that gets used, the more oil we use.  Hopefully the 70% of Americans that didn't know this can learn from it.

 

 

 

Global Warming

Every now and then, I come across something that seems too ridiculous to be true, and I have to do a double take and reread.  Today I came across one of those items that I found so positively outlandish that I had to read it repeatedly, and I'm still having a hard time digesting it.  From Global Warming:  The World's Endangered Destinations:

 

Northwest Territories, Canada: Polar bears have become one of the more obvious victims of the impact of global warming. With about 23,000 square miles of Arctic sea ice melting every year, the bears' hunting grounds are shrinking rapidly. Some scientists predict polar bears will be extinct in the next century. 

 

What was that, again?

 

With about 23,000 square miles of Arctic sea ice melting every year...

 

23000 square miles?  Really?

 

For a sense of perspective, and with the help of Google Maps, I did a quick sanity check on exactly how big that is, and came up with this:

 

From Denver going south, go to Santa Fe, New Mexico.

From Denver, going east, drive to Kansas City, Missouri.

 

Stop.

 

That's how much Arctic ice will melt this year.

That's insane.  How can that not be an imminent threat?  How far above sea level are Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Manhattan, again?  How about Tokyo?  Or London?

 

 

 

Spiders!

This is just one of those things about nature that I think is so cool.  From Science News:

 

To illustrate the amazing properties of spider silk, Nikola Kojic offers an arresting example. Imagine a circular web with a diameter of 100 meters—about the length of a football field—spun from a silk thread about a centimeter thick. Concentric circles 4 cm apart attach to the web's spokes, also 4 cm apart. This larger-than-life web "could stop a jumbo jet in midflight," says Kojic.

 

Ah, spiders.  Aren't they amazing?

 

 

 

 

 

You know, I only have a deep, abiding and irrational fear of spiders that are too big for me to step on.

 

 

Your Parrot Wants A Dictionary

I have two(!) parrots at home, and neither of them can do anything like this one.   Slackers.

 

Parrot uses 950 words to converse with people

Corin says: "An African Grey Parrot called N'kisi has a vocabulary of 950 words and can 'communicate' (as opposed to repeat). He has a sense of humour as well.

 

He uses words in context, with past, present and future tenses, and is often inventive.

One N'kisi-ism was "flied" for "flew", and another "pretty smell medicine" to describe the aromatherapy oils used by his owner, an artist based in New York.

When he first met Dr Jane Goodall, the renowned chimpanzee expert, after seeing her in a picture with apes, N'kisi said: "Got a chimp?"

Paging Boing Boing!  You have a link on the white courtesy phone!

Check out their link.  Seriously, it's very interesting.

 

I read this, and all I wanted to do was post this:

 

I had to.

 

Don't Eat That!

Oddly, I came across a couple of fairly interesting food related items today.

 

First there's this from Nutrition Action - Ten Foods You Should Never Eat.  Here's a excerpt:

 

7.  Snack Attack

Unless you're suicidal, why on earth would you want to wolf down a Burger King Quad Stacker – 4 hamburger patties, 4 slices of cheese, 8 strips of bacon, plus sauce and a bun? That's half-a-day's calories (1,000), one-and-a-half-days' worth of saturated fat (30 grams), 3 grams of trans fat, and more than a day's sodium (1,800 mg). Urp!

 

and...

 

9.  Tortilla Terror

Interested in a Chipotle Chicken Burrito (tortilla, rice, pinto beans, cheese, chicken, sour cream, and salsa)? Think of its 1,180 calories and 19 grams of saturated fat as three 6-inch Subway Steak and Cheese Subs. Getting the burrito with no cheese or sour cream cuts the saturated fat by two-thirds, but you still end up with 950 calories. Yikes!

I'd like to note these items for the record.

a.  I like cheese.

b.  I like bacon.

c.  I'm very impressed, but not surprised, by the fact that one Chipotle Chicken Burrito can have as many calories and saturated fat as THREE 6 inch steak and cheese subs.  I once watched a guy attempt to eat five Chipotle burritos in an hour on a bet.

 

He didn't make it. 

 

Those things are huge.

 

In light of this important health information, imagine my surprise when I came across this gem.

The Bad Foods For Dogs List

Here is a list of common foods that are bad or poisonous for your dog. If you suspect that your dog might have eaten any food that might be toxic, contact his/her vet immediately.

 

You can thank Moore's Haven for this.  Me, I thank the Internet.  It's not a bad idea to go check this out either.

Did I learn anything?  Yes.  Don't feed the dog booze, apricots, baby food, grapes, baby food or onions, among other items on the list.  It would seem, though, that steak, which is what every dog really wants anyway, is the ticket.

 

Just don't add salt.
 

And On The 8th Day God Said, "Don't Get Cocky"

I would consider mass deaths of large primates to disease to be... disconcerting.

 

In parts of the Republic of Congo in equatorial Africa, nearly all the gorillas are gone. Since 2001 gorilla and chimpanzee remains have showed up near and in the Lossi Sanctuary, close to the Gabon border. Just what was killing these great apes was unclear. Now researchers finger the Zaire strain of the Ebola virus as the culprit. "No doubt that's what killed them," says Peter Walsh, a primatologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. He and his team estimate that the virus has killed 5,500 gorillas in the northwestern part of the country.

Of four subtypes of the Ebola virus, Ebola Zaire is the nastiest, Walsh says. This virus has about an 80 percent mortality rate and infects primates, including humans. The disease begins with a headache and leads, in about a week, to hemorrhagic fever and organ failure.

That's from Scientific American.

 

Oddly, I haven't heard about any Ebola outbreaks in human populations in a while.

 

Knock on wood.

 

Tom Cullen sure is tired... M-O-O-N, that spells tired.

 

 

 

 

Caption Of The Week

First, let's look at the article.

 

Birdwatchers rushed excitedly to see a swallow that hasn't been seen in Britain for 20 years - then got a nasty surprise when eaten by a hawk in front of their eyes.

 

Article in Metro UK.  Found via Fark.

 

Now, *ahem*, the picture and caption.

 

 

A sparrowhawk: I'M IN UR SKIEZ,

EATIN UR SWALL0WZ

 

No, seriously.

That caption was, "I'M IN UR SKIEZ, EATIN UR SWALLOWZ"

 

Those that don't understand this particular Internet meme should take a look at this post on Boing Boing .

I love the parrot in the macaroni.  I'm not sure why.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nature Eats Amok

Eat more fish!

 

Families and tourists in a London park were left shocked when a pelican picked up and swallowed a pigeon. The unusual wildlife spectacle in St James's Park was caught on camera by photographer Cathal McNaughton. He said the Eastern White pelican had the unfortunate pigeon in its beak for more than 20 minutes before swallowing it whole.

 

Don't believe me?  Write the BBC.

 

That would be two extremely odd snacking events in nature lately.  This one just happened recently as well.

 

LYON, France -- Visitors to the Botanical Gardens in Lyon, France, should watch their fingers after a carnivorous plant there ate a mouse.

 

That's on WLWT.com.

 

I find this trend disturbing.  Aren't we at the top of the food chain?

 

I suppose that it's time to start eating pelican and pitcher plant salads.

This is Cy, the Adorable Cyclops Kitten.

Via Boing Boing.

 

This little kitty, named Cy, was born on December 28. It came into this world with one eye and no nose.

 

To get the full, unfettered, and thoroughly disturbing impact of this bizarre mutation, check at this Yahoo photo.

 

Methinks that the Boing didn't mean "adorable".  I think they meant, "Frightening and sad".  Yikes.  Did anyone check the family to see if they exhibit telekinesis, the ability to change the weather with their mind, or shoot laser beams from their eyes?

 

Lovely Rita, Meter Maid

Well, this should be good.  Not really.

 

MIAMI, Florida (CNN) -- Authorities in Texas and along the storm-shattered coast of Louisiana braced Wednesday for Hurricane Rita, as the powerful Category 4 storm picked up strength in the Gulf of Mexico.

 

Via CNN.

 

Oh, well, might as well get ready for the Supervolcano at Yellowstone to explode.  In case you were wondering, we have been forsaken.  You want the weekend (Friday/Saturday) plot?

1.  Gasoline price gouging.

2.  More looting in Texas, Louisana, anywere on the Gulf Coast.

3.  Inflation, again, in energy prices.

4.  Who knows what the hell else?!

 

Arrgh.  Perhaps it is time to crack each other's skulls open, and feast on the goo inside.