Where’s the peanut butter?!

Here’s the media bias again, favoring humans over animals again. We assume the 51-year old Chinese man’s penis was clean, though, right?

A Taiwanese man became a sitting target for a snake, which bit his penis as sat on the toilet at his rural home, local media reported on Monday.

“As soon as he sat down, he suddenly felt a knife-like pain and reacted instinctively by standing up,” the China Times said. “When he looked down, he saw the big snake.”

The 51-year-old man, from Nantou County, was under medical care with minor injuries, a director at Puli Christian Hospital said.

“As soon as he has passed the risk of infection, he can go,” the director, who declined to be named, said. “A snake’s mouth isn’t always clean.”

Local television images showed the black and yellow reptile, reportedly a species of rat snake, being uncoiled and plucked slowly from the toilet bowl.

Snakes regularly enter rural homes in Taiwan and other sub-tropical regions of Asia.

Jupiter, originally uploaded by Peru Tha Damaja.

You meowed quietly and stretched your legs when I picked you up from the ratty old basement chair, covered in fur and old bits of thrown up food. We looked around at the cracked yellow floor you’d walked across thousands of times and said goodbye to the swinging door I cut for you to make nighttime escapes. You said goodbye to the rows of fenced-in backyards that you’d indiscriminately considered your home for the past 8 years, your entire life, and went up the stairs, you cradled in my arms.

We stopped for a moment and went upstairs. Would you like to say goodbye to the lady, fast asleep, in whose restless lap you liked to try to find a comfy resting place? The dog made you too anxious to stay long and then headed back down to the entry way, stripped of its familiar golden trim. You eyed the box, your least favorite place to spend any time and I coaxed you inside, meowing with more apprehension.

“Do I have to?”

“Yes, little friend, I’m sorry but it has to be.”

“meow…”

You waited, unquietly, while I tethered the dog, whose excitement for any trip to anywhere would always be predictable and eventually I brought you with us out to the larger metal box where forces would jostle you around impolitely.

You reminded me of the first trip over five years ago when your breathing had grown strained and on our way to the doctor who would inspect your small, frail lungs and learn you suffered asthma, preparing you for a lifetime of forced puffs - one in the morning, one at night - to alleviate that struggle as we made our way north.

“meow”

“I know, I’ll miss it too.”

“meow”

“It won’t be long, I promise.”

I let you loose to explore the metal box for the rest of the trip. Your big friend lay quietly in the back as the streetlights streamed in, over, and past while you explored the front seat, armrest, and floor.

And eventually the box stopped - I opened the door, and you went out to explore your new home just past midnight.

“meow”

“I know - it’s not the same, but you’ll make friends. You always do.”

If there’s any justice in the world, this seal will be the butt end of jokes in the seal community through the rest of his adolescence:

Why the seal attempted to have sex with the penguin is unclear. But the scientists who photographed the event speculate that it was the behaviour of a frustrated, sexually inexperienced young male seal.

Also:

Chinstrap penguins occasionally indulge in homosexual behaviour, and adelie penguins sometimes “prostitute” themselves to get stones for nest-building; while one in seven emperor penguins will change partners from one year to the next.

Read on….

Dolphins are such incredible animals.

There is more information about the physics and how the behavior might be learned here, but click the picture and check out the video - it’s just amazing.

Wednesday afternoon I’m working in my parents’ dining room. All of a sudden, Hildy is getting a little wild over near the stove. From my angle I can’t quite tell what’s going on but I know 90 pounds of nine-month-old Bernese Mountain Dog puppy frolicking like that probably means trouble, so I go over to investigate.

I got there in time to get the scorpion out of her mouth before she ate it (and apparently before she got noticeably stung) but I’m reminded of the time Flora ate the lead curtain weights and a friend of my sister asked “Is that breed known for being especially bright?”

 ”…four baby Solomon Island leaf frogs. born Nov. 20 at the zoo in Washington. They skipped the tadpole phase emerging from their eggs as fully-formed frogs known as ‘froglets.’ The Solomon Island leaf frog is one of the few species in the world to do this….”

See also: Mearth