Uncle John's Bathroom Reader The World's Gone Crazy (7 page)

PAGING DR. SHARK

One afternoon in November 2009, tourists at Kelly Tarlton’s Underwater World in Auckland, New Zealand, reported that one of the aquarium’s sharks had just bitten another one in the belly—and that baby sharks were swimming out of the resulting gash. Staff quickly isolated the shark—they didn’t even know she was pregnant—and the babies, along with four more that were still in the mother’s womb. According to staff members, the attacking shark had apparently bitten the pregnant shark in order to help her have the babies—a sort of shark cesarean section. “It had to bite a certain part to let the babies out,” said staffer Fiona Davies, “and do it without killing the babies or the mother.” No other “shark cesarean” had ever been reported, she added, and extensive study would be needed. (She also said that the mother and the babies were doing fine.)

The Las Vegas Golden Nugget hotel’s swimming pool encircles an actual shark tank
.

TOUGH BIRD

Someday when you’re out walking through the alpine mountains on New Zealand’s South Island—with your pet sheep—you’d better watch out: A vicious parrot might rip out out your sheep’s guts while it’s still alive. The region is home to the
kea
, a species of parrot known as one of the smartest, most inquisitive—and most savage—on the planet. Keas normally eat things that wouldn’t surprise anyone: seeds, leaves, roots, insects, grubs, and the occasional chicks of other birds. But during the winter months, when food is scarce, the kea turns to something else: sheep. Groups of kea will swoop down on a herd of sheep, pick out one unlucky victim, and take turns jumping onto its rump. There they use their curved, strong beaks to tear away the wool, pierce through the skin, and bore into the sheep’s innards. (The bleating sheep is usually running around in terror at this point.) From there, the birds stick their heads inside the sheep and rip out chunks of succulent fat from around its kidneys. Given the chance, they’ll even eat its organs and intestines. Sheep that have been attacked by keas sometimes die during the attack; more often, they die later of infection.

LOUSE GOT YOUR TONGUE?

The tongue-eating louse (
Cymothoa exigua
) is a marine
isopod
, a type of crustacean related to woodlice that lives in ocean waters and grows to about two inches in length. Why is it called a “tongue-eating louse”? Because it crawls into the gills of a rose snapper fish, makes its way to the base of the fish’s tongue, sticks its claws into the tongue, and sucks the fluid out of it. The tongue eventually withers away completely, and the louse then attaches itself to the nub that’s left. Surprisingly, the fish is not harmed by this process. More surprisingly, the louse actually becomes the fish’s substitute tongue—the fish can even move it around using the muscles in the old tongue’s nub. Open the mouth of a fish infested by
Cymothoa exigua
, and you’ll see something you’d expect to see in a science-fiction film: a whitish creature with beady little black eyes looking out at you, wiggling its clawed legs. They’re normally found only in the waters of the Gulf of California, but one was recently spotted in the mouth of a snapper…in London, England.

Barbie dolls sold in Japan have their lips closed, with no teeth showing
.

SOCIAL NUTWORKING

Strange and crazy stories from the virtual worlds of Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace
.

T
ERRORISM IN 140 CHARACTERS OR LESS
Twenty-six-year-old Paul Chambers of Ireland was trying to catch a plane home, but it was delayed due to heavy snow at Robin Hood Airport in South Yorkshire, England. Chambers logged on to his Twitter account (a blogging site that allows you to “tweet” updates in 140 characters or less) and wrote an “amusing” message for his friends:

    Robin Hood airport is closed. You’ve got a week to get your s*** together, otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!!”

Another Twitterer saw the tweet and alerted police, who deemed it a threat and arrested Chambers a week later under the U.K.’s Terrorism Act. He said that he spent seven hours trying to explain Twitter to detectives before they released him. He was banned from Robin Hood Airport for life, was suspended from his job, and his iPhone, laptop, and home computer were confiscated.

@ THE ALTAR

Tracy Page was surprised when her brand-new husband, Dana Hanna, pulled out his cell phone—while their wedding was still going on—and posted this update to Twitter:

    Standing at the altar with @TracyPage where, just a second ago, she became my wife! Gotta go, time to kiss my bride.

Before he kissed her, the groom updated his Facebook status to “married.” Then he pulled out Tracy’s cell phone (which he’d also brought to the altar) and updated
her
Twitter and Facebook accounts. Only then did Dana kiss the bride. Said the priest: “If it’s official on Facebook, it’s official in my book.”

DUMB AS A POST

A woman in Fort Loudoun, Pennsylvania, arrived home one afternoon in 2009 to find that someone had broken in to her house: A window was broken, cabinet doors were ajar, and her two diamond rings were gone. Then she noticed that her computer had been turned on, and there was a Facebook page on the screen—belonging to one of her neighbors, 19-year-old Jonathan Parker. The woman called police, and they arrested Parker and recovered the two rings. During the burglary, Parker had stopped to check his Facebook page…and forgot to log off. He faces up to 10 years in prison.

That’s all? A study by a U.S. research firm found that 40% of Twitter messages are “pointless babble.”

IT’S NOT JUST
YOUR
SPACE

In 2009 a man robbed a bank in North Augusta, South Carolina. After a surveillance photo of the robber ran on the local news, police received a call from a viewer who said the suspect looked like his friend Joe Northington. On a tip, the cops checked Northington’s MySpace page and saw this message running across the top:

    On tha run for robbin a bank! Love all of yall.

Northington’s status was listed as “wanted.” He was arrested and convicted.

COME ONE, COME ALL

In 2009 police were alerted to this invitation posted on Facebook by siblings Chris and Cassandra Phalen in Papillion, Nebraska:

A History Making House Party!

    Liquor, six kegs of beer, a DJ, professional photographer, and shuttle service. P.S. Don’t worry about the cops, I have a police scanner so I will have the heads up if they come.

Undercover cops showed up at the party and arrested nine underage guests, along with the Phalens.

THIS THING DOES MORE THAN POST UPDATES?

Two girls, aged 10 and 12, got stuck in a storm drain in Australia in 2009. Despite their yells for help, no one came to their rescue. Finally, one of the girls had an idea—she took out her cell phone and used it to update her Facebook status:

    We’re stuck in the storm drain! Call for help!

More than an hour later, firefighters showed up and freed the girls. Said one of the rescuers: “They could have just called us directly and we could have gotten there quicker than relying on someone being online and replying to them and eventually having to call us anyway.”

World’s oldest paraglider: Peggy McAlpine. She was 100 when she flew for the first time
.

MIGHTY UNICORNS
VS. KONKRETE KIDS

Actual high-school team names
.

P
UNS
•
Poca Dots
(Poca High School, West Virginia)
•
Hot Dogs
(Frankfort, Indiana)

•
Deaf Leopards
(Arkansas School for the Deaf)

•
Fightin’ Planets
(Mars, Pennsylvania)

SOUNDS DIRTY, BUT ISN’T (OR IS IT?)

•
Butte Pirates
(Arco, Idaho)

•
Cornjerkers
(Hoopeston, Illinois)

•
Purple Pounders
(Harrison, Tennessee)

NOT THAT INTIMIDATING

•
Pretzels
(New Berlin, Illinois)

•
Nimrods
(Watersmeet, Michigan)

•
Syrupmakers
(Cairo, Georgia)

•
Jugglers
(Utica, New York)

• Bumblebees
(Little River, Texas)

•
Tractors
(Dearborn, MI)

•
Kewpies
(Columbia, Missouri)

• Poets
(Montgomery, Alabama)

•
Mighty Unicorns
(New Braunfels, Texas)

•
Orphans
(Centralia, Illinois)

JUST ODD

• Wooden Shoes
(Teutopolis, Illinois)

•
Sugar Beeters
(Chinook, Montana)

•
Golden Goblins
(Harrison, Arkansas)

•
Konkrete Kids
(Northampton, Pennsylvania)

•
Millionaires
(Williamsport, Pennsylvania)

In 2008 South Africa passed a law making it illegal for kids under the age of 16 to kiss
.

ECCENTRIC WRITERS

We don’t think it’s so weird to do this stuff. But then, we’re writers
.

• Poet
John Donne
(1572–1631) kept a coffin in the office where he wrote. Occasionally, he’d climb inside it to remind himself how fleeting life can be, a major theme in his poetry.

•
Jonathan Swift
(1667–1745), author of
Gulliver’s Travels
, always walked around his house while he ate because he believed that moving around while eating would cancel out the food and help him keep weight off.

• In 2009 Sotheby’s of London auctioned off a series of largely unpublished letters of the famous Romantic poet
Lord Byron
(1788–1824). In them, Byron criticizes the Portuguese, who he says have “few vices except lice and sodomy.” And, in a display of bathroom humor well ahead of his time, he calls his rival William Wordsworth “Turdsworth.”

• The Irish poet
William Butler Yeats
(1865–1939) suffered from chronic sexual dysfunctions. After dealing with the problem for many years, he did something about it—he had the “Steinach operation,” a surgery that claimed to provide a “reactivation” of the male organs. It was basically just a vasectomy, but Yeats claimed that both his sex life and literary output greatly improved.

• American poet
James Russell Lowell
(1819–91), founding editor of
The Atlantic Monthly
, once attended a dinner party where he carefully removed each flower from a bouquet centerpiece and, with a knife and fork, ate every single one.