– – In Runaway Bay, Texas a man found what he believed to be a chupacabra lying near hole 14 of a golf course! It’s a brown, hairless animal with inch-long toes, curved claws, long hind legs, and oversized canine teeth.
It’s neither a dog, nor a coyote…the smart money says that it’s a hairless raccoon, based on the feet, skull structure, and ears…
– – Controversial animal testing for cosmetics manufacturers could soon be replaced by a new technology which uses laboratory-grown human skin cells to simulate the body’s allergic response to foreign chemicals.
The standard method for testing allergic reactions involves applying chemicals to the ears of mice or guinea pigs, which are later killed and dissected for study.- – Kinda a “no-win” situation for rodents…
The new method would use a glass chip with human skin cells and chemicals which simulate the body’s immune system. When a foreign substance is dropped onto the chip, the cells and chemicals interact to mimic the human’s body’s natural allergic response. A working prototype by Hurel Corp. funded by L’Oreal is in the works, and could be in use by next year…
– – Is it here yet?- -Is it here yet?- –You gotta excuse me if I sound like Eric Cartman or perhaps Bart Simpson, but I just can’t wait for the February 12, 2010 arrival of The Wolfman. – – Can you blame me?!
The cast of the 1941 original was awesome, with Lon Chaney Jr, Claude Rains, and Bela Lugosi on board, but this remake will have Anthony Hopkins, Benecio Del Toro (the Wolfman), Emily Blunt, Hugo Weaving, and Art Malik. Universal is striving to re-image their classic horror masterpiece, and from all I have read, does a great job! Ain’t no school like the old school…
So bring on the slavering man-beast, and let’s do something dastardly and perhaps scandalous to fair maidens as they run through the moors!- –Let’s go where the wolfbane blooms, and the autumn moon shines at night!- –Heck, I wanna live there!
– – Forget that dinosaurs didn’t live happily alongside cavemen, and that there was no genus “Snorkosaurus;” just relax and enjoy the presence of Dino (pronounced DEE-no) the dinosaur on The Flintstones. Acting more like a labrador retriever than a reptile, Dino barks, slobbers, romps, and cavorts, especially when Fred Flintstone arrived home from a long day at the slate quarry…
The cat on The Flintstones, BTW, was called Baby Puss, and was basically a saber-toothed tiger, who was more than smart enough to lock Fred out of the house when he attempted to put Baby out for the night. Sadly, Baby Puss was largely seen during the closing credits… 
– – I, for one, was rather disappointed when MonsterQuest chose to kick off their new season with an episode on great white sharks, hoping instead for a thought-provoker on some cryptid, even if they had to re-visit one covered previously. Now I know that great whites are awesome predators, but they’re not quite in the same category for me as say, Bigfoot or the Jersey Devil. I don’t want MonsterQuest to become Wild Kingdom.
The points were well-taken, however, that sharks are not just mindless eating machines, but rather show evidence of premeditated attacks which they can adapt to circumstances. Additionally, sharks have been known to engage in practice attacks in which they kill but don’t eat their prey. Sharks are, in short, more sophisticated beasties than we give them credit for being, and there’s much about them that we don’t yet know.
The “shark cam” was successfully attached and interesting, although the device was overbuilt and didn’t remain on for as long as hoped due to the drag factor. The device shows much promise with a re-design and a smaller housing.
As a horrifying sidebar, a Zimbabwean tourist was recently killed off a Cape Town South African Beach by a great white shark described as being “longer than a mini-bus.” The shark attacked the victim three times, with others bathers only about 15 meters away. Remains are not expected to be found. A raised black flag (pictured) reminds bathers that beaches around Cape Town remain on full alert following the attack…
– – Part plant and part animal, a sea slug found living in salt marshes in New England and Canada called Elysia chlorotica is the first multicellular animal found to be able to produce the plant pigment chlorophyll. The critters can actually survive without food if a light is shined on them for twelve hours a day.- -Now that’s walkin’ on sunshine!
The slugs appear to acquire this ability by stealing genes from algae that they’ve eaten, stealing also minute cell parts called chloroplasts which enable conversion of sunlight into energy.
The slug has been studied for about twenty years, although scientists are not yet sure how the animals appropriate the genes that they need. This is yet another example of how invertebrates can do some pretty amazing things…well, let’s see you live without food! 😉
– – Gumby’s creator Art Clokey died Friday at the age of 88. The shape-shifting little green flexible guy grew out of a student project Clokey produced at the University of Southern California in the early 1950’s called Gumbasia, which led to shorts featuring Gumby and his horse friend Pokey, who seemed to be a practical, reality-based equine.
Gumby’s swooping head was based on the cowlick hairdo of his father, and Clokey’s wife suggested that he give Gumby the body of a gingerbread man. Gumby eventually became one of the most familiar toys of all time, although his creator didn’t allow merchandising for seven years after Gumby was on the air, not wanting parents to think they were exploiting their children. Clokey also created the moralizing and often satirized claymation duo, “Davey and Goliath” for the Lutheran Church, using the money gained to help bring a Gumby series back to television in the 1960’s. “Moral Orel” on Adult Swim is one such satire of the Lutheran Church contracted work, described as “Davey and Goliath meets South Park.”
Eddie Murphy brought a surge in Gumby’s popularity in the 1980’s with his send-up of the character on Saturday Night Live, who Murphy depicted as profane and cigar-smoking. Clokey, however, said he enjoyed Eddie Murphy’s portrayal.
As Eddie Murphy’s character might have said , “My creator dead?- -Dammit!” (pardon my French…) 😉
– – How cold is it in Florida?- -Cold enough so that iguanas are dropping off the trees!
Scientists say that when temperatures drop below 40 degrees, so do the iguanas; they essentially go into hibernation in order to survive! This fact has spawned at least one urban legend of a guy who collected some stunned iguanas and put a bunch of them in the back seat of his car, thinking them dead. – –Well, when he ran the heat in his car, the iguanas came back to life, probably asked to be driven to Taco Belle, and began crawling all over things, to catastrophic effect- -or at least so the story says!
Meanwhile, more than 140 Florida sea turtles have washed up on the shores within a 48-hour period, stunned by the cold. The turtles simply become lethargic, can’t swim anymore, and wash up on shore. The Florida Aquarium is helping some of the turtles survive…
At least we have stunned iguanas raining from trees to talk about until the new season of MonsterQuest begins!
– – Saturday night in British Columbia, Canada an 11-year-old boy was gathering firewood in his backyard when his18-month-old golden retriever ran towards him, jumping over a lawn mower and into the path of a charging cougar!
The dog, appropriately called Angel, took the brunt of the cougar’s attack and when Royal Canadian Mounted Police arrived, they found the dog under the front porch with the cougar’s jaws locked around her neck. Two rounds shot into the cougar’s rear end were unable to break the death grip, and it was subsequently necessary to fire a third shot and kill the cougar.
Angel the retriever suffered extensive injuries including a fractured skull, but underwent surgery and her vets hope for a full recovery. Greater love hath no dog than this, right?
– – Elmer Fudd has always been the perfect patsy for Bugs Bunny; although the outcome of their encounters is a given and you know Elmer couldn’t possibly hurt Bugs, you have to admire the rabbit’s artful and leisurely baiting of the incompetent, bumbling hunter.–Just sit back, relax, and watch a true master at work!
The great classics never really get old, and the woodland encounters of this duo are timeless, playing as well in the present as they did decades ago. Besides being hopelessly inept, Elmer is cursed with a speech impediment, engineered back in the days when Porky Pig stuttered painfully and it was not politically incorrect.- -Well, Elmer still has trouble with his /r/ sound, so “rabbit season” comes out “wabbit season.”– – We wouldn’t have it any other way! But after being coached and corrected several times on the /r/ sound, Elmer is spent, stomping off with complaints that the director is “getting on his nerves!.”
As part of Geico’s “Rhetorical Question” series, it’s good to see the mighty hunter again. Just be “vewy, vewy quiet, he’s hunting wabbits!”- –Looney Tunes forever!!!
FOXSYLVANIA 
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