April 07, 2006

• That was awesome. Banal, yet awesome.
• Although, modern scholars point out that it was really only one rat. And that picture is misleading.
• har.
• But the idea is really great for at least a few seconds.
• 
• That is illogical.
• I fart in your general direction!!
• "Finally I yelp like a woman..." ♫♪ Only women yelp, only women yelp... ♪ /Cooper
• I had a bee in my car once... I neglected to feature that event in my blog...evidently I was remiss in that... :-\
• I was cooking last summer, and a giant bluebottle landed on the window. Then it flew again. Never saw the filthy thing again. Mustn't like asparagus or something.
• there was a spider in my car once. you try stepping on a bug on yr dashboard while you're driving (and squealing with phobia-induced fear!)
• MonkeyFilter: squealing with phobia-induced fear!
• I discovered a spider on my flatbed scanner once. After yelping like a, eh, little girl, I crushed it. And yes, I blogged about it. With pictures. Oh boy.
• I have yet to kill a spider... They kill other bugs, so they're like my bug police... (oh, and for the arachnaphobes... don't worry about swallowing spiders in your sleep, it's very unlikely to happen, unless THIS DOES: ...Put it all together, and it would be a miracle for a spider to end up in anyone's mouth while they're sleeping, except for one rare circumstance--when a spider egg sac hatches indoors. At that point, you can have hundreds of microscopic spiders, a millimeter long or less, leaping into the air in a short time span (under an hour total) and trying to ride the air currents to freedom. This is as known as "ballooning"; you may remember it from Charlotte's Web. If you're in a house where a bunch of microscopic spiders are ballooning around, you MIGHT accidentally inhale about a dozen one night, IF the air were circulating sufficiently for them to get airborne and stay there long enough to drift in front of your face...
• Debaser, you need to be severely punished for that. If I ever happen to inhale baby spiders in my sleep I just don't ever want to know about it...
• I also try always to refrain from killing helpless insects; something like those skinny, ethereal spiders with thin legs don't spook me. They have stumbled on me, and I try to pick them up for safe disposal outside. But that one was a freaky, thick legged, hairy beast. Sorry, but it was her or me! Ah, debaser, I hope you discover a dead horse's ass on your bed tomorrow morning...
• From the way he describes it, small and brownish, it was a mouse not a rat. Big wussy. Once in my youth, I worked at an ice cream shop. I always got stuck working the walk up window on little league night, and scooping cones for 200 kids and their annoying parents. One day a mouse ran across my foot as I was handing the cone over. I didn't flinch or make a sound. Big wussy. But if people ticked me off, I did perfect the fine art of wrapping the cone in a napkin, then squeezing it until a network of hairline cracks spread through the cone, then handing it over with a smile.
• ah, thanks Chy. I hadn't seen that in years.
• Here at Casa Best, we have instituted a thorough Insect Relocation Program, or IRP. Upon discovery of the tiny illegal alien by one of the inhabitants, a plastic container is used to convince the bug to stay in one place. Then, a sheet of paper or perhaps a magazine subscription card is slid under the edge of the plastic container, creating a temporary "floor" for the unwelcome visitor. Upon removal to the Big Blue Room, the interloper is then released on its own recogniznce. Ocassionally this process ends in a frantic scamper for the door in the case of a wasp or other buzzy stingy thing. Of course, the resident Jack Russell Terrierist has differing opinions as to the relocation methods for said insects. She sometimes prefers the "freedom through ingestion" method.
• mr petebest what a lovely picture you paint.
• It's the lab coat, I think.
• Lab coat? I thought it was a Jack Russell Terrier. zing! Speaking of Jack Russell Terriers, the one down the road has, over successive visits, eaten all -- ALL -- of my chickens except one. Including the only rooster I ever had that didn't attack all visitors (especially little children). I'm usually pretty nice to dogs, but if that one shows up again I'll be tempted to go Dick Cheeney on the little bastid.
• .....After tragically crunching Mr. Adorable Brown Rat with my Reebok, I decided he could use a smoke break. I picked him up, carefully placed him in a sitting position on the edge of the ashtray, and put the burning butt in his mouth. His cute little paws I draped over the cigarette, so that he seemed to be taking an enormous, satisfying puff; glassy, beady little black eyes vacant. (I did wash my hands vigorously before returning to food prep, rest assured!) Wow.
• petebest, I think we were separated at birth. I relocate insects both at home and at work. There's a lovely planter thingy with lots of dirt and twigs just outside that they go to. My coworkers say they think I'm nuts, but they always inquire after the little critters when it's done.
• I'm also a critter relocater. Unless it's a very large muscular spider heading toward me at full speed with a malicious expression. Then it's time for the feline spider dispatching unit.
• I constantly fight a rodent phobia and I'm a huge wuss about spiders. Now I hate you all and I will never fly again.
• One word. Bugzapper!
• I don't think I would let steely flight attendant glares keep me from pitching a fit if a rodent touched me on a plane. *shudder*
• Unless it was a rabid-looking rat that had just bit me, I'd keep a low profile on any rodent spotting in a plane. Sure, inform attendants and whatnot, but making a huge fuss that could end up with me tagged as terrruurisht trying to create a panic on a plane (and no visible rodent afterwards) is really something to consider. Ah, terror.
• Well, yes. I was raised to be polite, so I'd do my best to be quiet and alert an attendant, then ask really nicely for some sort of travel voucher or something for my trouble. (Because really. I think there's some sort of implied "no rodent clause" in most American modes of travel.) But my rodent phobia is such that I can't promise I wouldn't squeal and hop up onto my seat.
• MonkeyFilter: I can't promise I wouldn't squeal and hop up onto my seat.
• We return some critters to the great outdoors when they come inside. Exceptions: 1) Cellar spiders, frail wee beasties, which seem to subsist mainly upon other cellar spiders, and an occaisional fruit fly. 2) Bottflies and horseflies -- I slay these remorsely, but the horses are glad of it, (and if you've ever been bitten by one of these damned beasts you know it amounts to a plea of self-defense, your honour). 3)Fleas and the assorted internal parasites/hungry ghosts which, over the years, have chosen to live within my pets. 4) Mosquitos. /honeybee revealed as mass-murderer!
• OK, folks. Time for a story: Not rats, mind you. Let's call it "hamsters on a plane." A long time ago, in the early days of circadian biology, someone discovered that hamsters are great models for study. They have nice, regular, predictable internal clocks. One guy even likes to tell people "you can set your watch by them." So anyway, a group at University A had some hamsters with unusual properties. University B wanted to see some of these hamsters. So, a professor at University A decided to ship some over. Of course, shipping live animals is expensive - and these little hamsters were rare. A special mutant variety, with a much faster internal clock. So, our good professor decided rather than shipping the hamsters alone as live freight, he would accompany them. Before he left home, he gave each tiny hamster a carefully measured dose of sedative. He then packed the sleepy hamsters into his carry-on bag, boarded the plane, and promptly fell asleep himself. A while later he awoke to the sweet sound of someone shrieking "There's a hamster loose in the plane!" So our intrepid professor did what anyone else would do in this situation - he opened his carry-on bag and counted, to see if the wayward hamster was his. That last part is what makes the story so goddamn funny to me. He actually thought someone else on the plane may have been packing hamsters. This story is pretty well known in the circadian field. Right up there with the "mice break into my garage to play on my running wheels" story. I've met the people behind these tales, and am happy to report that both stories are true, even if they may smack of urban legend.
• *♥ clf*
• Yeah, but what happened with the fucking hamster? Christ, that's not how you tell a story! Way to leae me hangin'. Aussie rule of the Yarn: even if you don't know the end of the story, or if it is anticlimactic, make some shit up, preferably outrageous. My ending for that story would be that the rodent somehow got into the inside of the hull & was eventually sucked into the engine, resulting in the plane having to make an emergency stop at Kuwait, where the hamster guy was dragged into a blackmarket hamster smuggling operation for the Kurdish scag baron Savage Hajib.
• *pulls Chyren from the stage with an oversized candycane*
• And that, boys and girls was the First Thanksgiving!
• MonkeyFilter: Yeah, but what happened with the fucking hamster? Hamsters! On a plane!
• Sadly, it didn't end well for the hamster. He and his brethren (after multiple opportunities to breed, thus ensuring the survival of their mutant race) were sacrificed to the gods of Brain Nucleus Transplants, thus proving beyond a shadow of a doubt the location of the mammalian circadian clock. Plus, there was an emergency stop in Toronto afer the hamster made an ill-fated attempt to climb the pilot's leg. Good enough for ya, Chy? If not, here is an actual, true hamster story with a "what happened to the hamster?" ending: Working at a university, my first job out of college. I was in charge of maintaining some computers and equipment in a lab, among other things (such as cell culture, radioactivity, and other interesting topics). We had one room that was kind of hidden away, a dark closet of a room used for fluorescent imaging mostly (which requires darkness for good images). It also happened to have the oldest computer in the lab; not good for much besides imaging, but it did have a secret installation of Worms that I quite enjoyed in my spare moments. One fine day as I sat there blowing up hapless animated annelids, I looked down by my feet to see a hamster, staring at me with its beady little eyes. I was understandably surprised - how did a hamster get into this room? A room buried inside of a larger room, both with closed doors and little to no clearance for a hamster to crawl under? It was a small hamster - a dwarf Russian actually - which made things even more strange. I knew we had frogs and mice in the building, but hamsters? And a dwarf one to boot? So I did what anyone would have done - I picked it up, plopped it in a box with some shredded paper for bedding, and sent an email around the department. Turns out the little guy - er, gal - was the matron of a large brood of hamster kidlets in a lab upstairs. The hamster colony was used for research, and the mommy hamster - the oldest one they had - had gradually morphed from lab animal to lab mascot. They were heartbroken to find her missing, and overjoyed to get her back unharmed. I still don't know how this tiny hamster made it through the maze of hallways, down two flights of stairs and through two locked doors to end up in that back room.
• Frogs: Air ducts?
• secret hamster?
• Could be air ducts. Except they were mounted at ceiling level. It would be a long drop down a plaster wall for the hamster. I'm a fan of the "shimmied down the baseboard at the edge of the stairs like it was a monster playground slide" theory.
• "I still don't know how this tiny hamster made it..." Hamsters are escape artists par excellence, and can also squeeze thru the tiniest of spaces you wouldn't believe. Nocturnal explorers constantly on the lookout for new digs and food.
• Nocturnal explorers constantly on the lookout for new digs and food Man, I miss my university days...