Oddities and Humor

During the Gulf War, we were always told to shake out our boots before putting them back on in order to avoid snakes or scorpions.

To heck with the man! Poor pea sized spider! Poor spider indeed is what I'm thinking!! The guy's an idiot for taking his shorts off in the first place then not shaking them out before putting them back on.

Poor spider moseying along then she finds some shade (the shorts). Takes a cool brief rest in this cotton cave of sorts. Then all of a sudden the world starts shifting and rising from the ground then the poor spider is trapped in the dark along with this sinister snake!! What else can this spider do but defend itself!!

Speaking as one who has had a scorpion run inside his pants leg, the little beggars get scant sympathy from the bitten and stung.

I looked that up, cos I just KNEW it was related to the Australian redback:

Australian redback:


I have to say I wish the redback was endangered. Though very poisonous, they are not aggressive at all.

Sounds like the katipo was sorely provoked.

That Australian Redback looks much more like an American Black Widow than the other one.

I've a friend who went to Oz a few years ago. She was working on a farm, one day they found her driving in circles in the field. When she'd put on her headphones to block out the noise of the tractor, she was bitten by a redback. She woke up three weeks later in a hospital. Spent another two recuperating, in delirium and pain, in the farmer's home, on the living room floor where they could keep an eye on her.
I'm told they can kill a horse.
The black widow is the only poisonous spider I've ever seen in Canada and it only lives in a few select locations. Most of us are unused to shaking our shoes and clothing before we put it on.
He's not an idiot but I'd agree to ignorant.

Black widows hide from you, generally. You have to lift up a rock or something to find them, most of the time.

Incorrect. Only small children and elderly people are at risk of dying, most people are safe as long as traetment is administered within a reasonable time.
I have redbacks in my shed. Once a year i spray them with flyspray. Dlowan is correct they are very nonagressive.

I think most poisonous animals are not that aggressive. Water moccasin snakes are more afraid of us than we are of them. We had one get inside a storage room, on the patio of an apartment. It hid beneath a pile of stuff. Not feeling heroic, I called animal control. The man they sent was wearing tennis shoes. He stepped into the room, moved the stuff about and fished the snake up with something and dropped it in a cage. He took it to the country and turned it loose. A year later, I discovered another one near the same apartment. I radioed my coworker for help. The snake saw me and dove into some weeds. It was quick enough, it could have escaped, but it chose to hide. We flushed it out and killed it. I felt we had to get it because there were small children living there.

MOON AND VENUS

NEW YORK - Pee-Wee is Broadway bound.

"The Pee-Wee Herman Show" will have a 48-performance run at the Stephen Sondheim Theatre starting Oct. 26.

It is based in part on the cult TV show "Pee-Wee's Playhouse" and will star Pee-Wee himself, Paul Reubens
Producer Scott Sanders said Thursday that it will follow "a day in the life of our bow-tied hero."

Other cast members will be announced later.

A Miami court ruled on Thursday that Burger King Holdings has the right to set prices at its stores but said allegations by the franchisees of bad faith by the company had enough plausibility to be argued in court.

The National Franchisees Association had alleged Burger King admitted that selling its double cheeseburger at $1 could lead to the bankruptcy of stores.

U.S. District Judge K. Michael Moore ruled that, "construed in a light most favorable to the NFA, these allegations plausibly state a claim that BKC breached its duty of good faith."

Burger King said in a statement emailed to Reuters it was pleased by the court's decision to reaffirm its rights, and added that extensive testing "more than validated the business case for the addition of this competitively priced product to its Value Menu."

Burger King spokesman Miguel Piedra also said that a number of franchisees had embraced the promotion before its national roll-out.

The National Franchisees Association sued Burger King late last year in the Miami federal court, alleging that the company did not have the right to enforce maximum pricing rules.

Fast-food restaurants use low-priced food like $1 burgers to lure diners into restaurants, but if those items are priced below cost, franchisees can suffer.

Officials at the National Franchisees Association and Burger King could not immediately be reached for comment.

Shares in Burger King closed up 17 cents at $18.88 on Friday.

(A customer who has just made a purchase comes back into our store asking for help; she’s locked her keys in her car. I go out to try and help.)

Me: “Ma’am, your window is open.”

Customer: “What?”

Me: “Your window. It’s open.”

(The customer reaches in and gets her keys, opens the door, rolls up the window, locks the car, throws the keys back inside, and closes the door.)

Me: “Um…”

Customer: “I know! I know! It’s just that I already called my husband to bring the second set! He’d have given me h*** if he saw the window was open!”

No Edgar, you just fail to recognize the depth of my feelings towards to poisonous reptiles.

The one I described us killing was terrified of us. I felt very badly to be taking its life. I don't really think it would have harmed anybody, but there is just enough chance I was wrong, I could not let the little kids play out there with it around.

RENO, Nev. - Voters dressed in chicken costumes won't be allowed inside Nevada polling places this year.

State election officials on Friday added chicken suits to the list of banned items after weeks of ridicule directed at Republican Senate candidate Sue Lowden.

The millionaire casino executive and former beauty queen recently suggested that people barter with doctors for medical care, like when "our grandparents would bring a chicken to the doctor."
Democrats responded by setting up a website, "Chickens for Checkups," and by sending volunteers in chicken suits to her campaign events.

Lowden is in a 12-way primary race to decide Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's Republican opponent. She had been the front-runner in the race, but was in a virtual tie for the lead in a recent poll.

Under the new rule, chicken costumes will be banned along with political buttons, shirts, hats and signs within 100 feet of polling places.

Washoe County Registrar of Voters Dan Burk said such a costume would be an "inappropriate and obvious" advocacy message against Lowden.

Lowden campaign manager Robert Uithoven hailed the decision.

"I think voters will be spared the Harry Reid carnival and that's a good thing," he told The Associated Press. "I think most voters are going to the polls thinking about far greater things than Harry Reid's chickens."

Reid spokesman Jon Summers said the Nevada Democratic Party has been sending the volunteers in chicken costumes to Lowden events and he was unaware of any plans for them to show up at the polls.

"Maintaining fair elections is an important thing and we respect the decision that has been made by election officials," he said. "I certainly can understand why that would be a sensitive issue for her since she has been called out on her concept of bartering chickens for checkups."

Today I watched Judge Judy (Don't Piss on Me and Tell Me It's Raining) Sheindlin. Couldn't believe this kid. He told the judge, "I was cold walking home, so I pushed her to the ground and took her car." He made it sound as though his situation justified a car jacking. Then, at the end of a police chase, he wrecked the car. "I don't think I should have to pay for the car. I was driving, but the police made me have the wreck." He had already been in trouble for marijuana and assaulting a teacher in school. Nothing happened as a consequence of any of his bad actions, except that he got 5 years probation over the car. The judge lectured him and made him pay for the car. After the ruling, he was shown to say, "I still don't think I should have had to pay for the car."

A stash of trash collected by an elderly pair of South Side hoarders held them hostage for weeks. It appears the woman, 75, fell through mounds of trash in her home on the 1500 block of East 69th Street in the Grand Crossing neighborhood. When she couldn't free herself from the rubble, her 76-year-old husband tried to her rescue her but suffered the same fate. Luckily Chicago police conducted a well-being check at the home Monday evening and found the couple alive. No word who requested the well-being check since no other residents live in the building

JAKARTA, Indonesia - A video of smoking toddler is sparking outrage on the web. When the clip of 2-year-old Sumatran Ardi Rizal puffing away surfaced on YouTube Wednesday, it spread to online social media like, well, fire. Popular blog Gawker linked to the smoking baby video, calling him "totally cooler than you." But user Faldo777's response was the more typical response: "His parents should be jailed ..."

In fact, his parents say Rizal throws a tantrum when they refuse to give him a cigarette. His father gave him his first smoke when he was just 18 months old.

The smoking toddler was witnessed by a reporter who recently visited his home in the fishing village of Musi Banyuasin, in Indonesia's South Sumatra province.

"I'm not worried about his health, he looks healthy," shrugged the boy's father Mohammad Rizal. "He cries and throws tantrums when we don't let him smoke. He's addicted."