Posts from — July 2007

However, a young woman who escaped from a fire here is crediting spiders for saving her life!

Danielle Vigue, 18, who hates spiders, says she awoke early Tuesday to find spiders in her room, and started killing them.

When more showed up, she says she went across the hall and got into bed with her 15-year-old sister, Lauren.

“At first there were five, they were all around the light fixture,” Danielle Vigue told The Saginaw News. “I hate spiders, they freak me out.”

A fire, the newspaper said, apparently was smoldering in the attic of the home about 90 miles northwest of Detroit.

A few hours later, Vigue’s 48-year-old mother, Debra, and 8-year-old sister, Shelby, smelled smoke, and flames greeted the family when they opened the door to the room Danielle Vigue had earlier left.

“I will never kill another spider again,” she told WNEM-TV in Saginaw.

Richland Township Fire Chief Gary Wade, a 30-year veteran of the Saginaw County department, was surprised by Vigue’s story.

“I’ve never heard of spiders saving someone from a fire before,” Wade said.

JOKESTARTERS:

• To honor these six-legged heroes, John Cougar Mellencamp is hosting a fundraiser called “Unsung Arachnid Firefighting Heroes” which will be sponsored by Raid and held in an old abandoned warehouse near Central Park.
• The weird thing about these spiders is that, upon closer inspection, investigators discovered tiny oxygen tanks on their backs. They all would’ve survived the fire if the freaky little teenager hadn’t have stomped them all to death.
• Ironically, actor Samuel L. Jackson had a similar incident happen, where dozens of snakes suddenly appeared coming out a light fixture on his airplane. Since he “hates muthafuckin’ snakes” he parachuted out, just in time – the plane burst into flames just as he escaped.

SOURCE:

• Centre Daily

Ben Czislowski had a clash of heads with Tweed Heads forward Matt Austin during a Queensland Cup game on April 1.

He had the wound stitched up but was wondering why he felt lethargic, had an eye infection and had shooting pains in his head ever since.

Czislowski, a former Broncos and Bulldogs player in the NRL, visited his GP last week and all was revealed.

“I can laugh about it now but the doctor told me it could have been serious with teeth carrying germs,” Czislowski, 24, said.

“I feel so lucky that the worst that I got out of it was that my head looked uglier than it does normally.”

It’s a bizarre story, so Czislowski has taken measures to ensure he is believed.

“I’ve got the tooth at home, sitting on the bedside table,” he said.

“If he (Austin) wants it back he can have it. I’m keeping it at the moment as proof that it actually happened.

“It’s a story I can tell for the rest of my life. It will get a bit more exaggerated over the years, but it’s a good laugh.”

The tooth’s removal has had an immediate effect on Czislowski’s on-field form – he was the driving force behind Wynnum’s 38-16 Queensland Cup win over Central at Rockhampton on the weekend.

“A lot of the boys have been giving it to me, saying I was using it (embedded tooth) as an excuse for my poor form but my eye looks a thousand times better already and I feel a lot better,” he said.

Czislowski is not the only rugby league player to have been left with an unlikely souvenir by an opponent.

In 2004, Australian hooker Shane Millard also had a foe’s fang removed from his head while playing for Widnes in the English competition.

Two years earlier, Australian Jamie Ainscough’s arm became so badly infected while playing for Wigan in England there were fears it would be amputated before the source was discovered.

Yep, a rival’s tooth.

JOKESTARTERS:

• This isn’t the first opponent’s body part to be implanted in Czislowski. Previously, he had severe anal aches. Turns out… (fill in the inappropriate blanks yersef meester).
• Ironically, once Czislowski removed his opponent’s tooth, the Tooth Fairy arrived and gave him a stolen $5 bill.

SOURCE:

• News.com.au

One doctor thought the bleeding, strange bumps on Aaron Dallas’ head might have been a gnat bite.

A specialist thought it was shingles, though both doctors held out the possibility that it was something far more disturbing.

Then the bumps started moving.

A doctor found five bot fly maggots living on Dallas’ head, near the top of his skull that after a few weeks after a mosquito apparently placed them there, had become active.

“I’d put my hand back there and feel them moving. I thought it was blood coursing through my head,” said Dallas, of Carbondale.

“I could hear them. I actually thought I was going crazy.”

Dallas said he likely received the larval infestation while on a trip to Belize this summer. Adult bot flies are hairy and look like bees, without bristles. One type, dermatobia hominis, attacks livestock, deer, and humans.

Mosquitoes, stable flies, and other insects are used by female bot flies to carry their eggs to the host, where in this case it was Dallas.

“It was weird and traumatic,” said Dallas, of Carbondale. “I would get this pain that would drop me to my knees.”

After a specialist told him he may have shingles, Dallas tried different creams and salves. But the pain got worse, so Dallas returned to Dr. Kimball Spence.

“When I saw him again, it was pretty obvious something else was going on,” said Spence, who could see the spots moving on Dallas’ head. “There’s an open pit. You see a little activity, not necessarily the larvae, but a fluctuation of the fluid in the pit,” Spence said.

The parasites, which were living in a pit 2- to 3- millimeters wide, were removed Thursday. His wife teases him about it now.

“It’s much funnier to everyone else,” Dallas said. “It makes my stomach turn over. It was cruel.”

Spence said bot fly infections are fairly routine in parts of Central and South America.

JOKESTARTERS:

• Finally, we meet someone we can honestly call Maggot Brain!
• As payback, the victim (Aaron Dallas) later found a hive of bot flies, squatted and implanted part of himself onto their heads.

SOURCE:

• Centre Daily

And now, it’s the Elvis Rock.

Rock collector LaDell Alexander of Estes Park, Colo., has found a stone she swears has the image of Elvis Presley on it.

The rock has a pattern of gray and white that appears to look like Elvis in profile.

“People are calling me the Elvis Rock Lady,” said Alexander, 60. “Seven out of 10 people see Elvis (on the rock).”

Alexander told The Coloradoan newspaper that she found the rock last summer, and she was cleaning it before putting it in her yard when she saw the image. Her husband confirmed the “Elvis” sighting.

“I was about 20 feet away and the first thing I said was, ‘That is Elvis,’” Lynn Alexander said.

Jessica Blezins, who works for Nature’s Own, a store that sells fossils and rocks, said that the image is definitely not man-made.

Alexander will sell the rock on eBay in August, near the 30th anniversary of Elvis’ death — and donate 10 percent of the proceeds to one of Elvis’ foundations.

Presley died on Aug. 16, 1977 at age 42. His legendary hits include “Hound Dog,” “Heartbreak Hotel,” “All Shook Up,” “Jailhouse Rock” and “I Can’t Help Falling in Love With You.”

JOKESTARTERS:

• Ironically, the rock was later found dead, slumped on the floor of the finder’s bathroom. It will be put to rest by being skipped over a small lake nearby.
• As a tribute to Elvis, the stone will be enshrined in a nearby prison, and will be called the Jailhouse Rock.
• Finally – proof that Elvis did rock. Literally.

SOURCE:

• ThePittsburghChannel.com

WALDOBORO, ME — Imagine working on an old house, doing some painting, when you find something, er…very handy.

Contractors working on an old house here did just that – they found a severed human hand – that police confirmed was 50 to 80 years old.

It’s still unclear whose hand it was and why it was there.

Painters working for Bo Jespersen, who renovates and sells old homes, discovered what appeared to be a man’s hand in June.

“They called me and said they’d been losing sleep over something they’d found,” Jespersen said. When he saw the hand, Jespersen was struck by its size, with fingers about an inch and a half longer than his own.

“It’s huge,” he said. “And he didn’t cut his nails.”

The wrist portion appeared jagged, Jespersen said, as if the hand had been removed violently, and 6 to 8 inches of what appeared to be tendons were looped around it.

The mysterious body part was discovered by Derek Levasseur of Clinton while he was painting what’s known as the Depot Road house, which was built in 1910. During a break, Levasseur was in the garage looking at a small wood-burning stove, which Jespersen had agreed he could have.

On top of the stove was a box, which Levasseur opened. At first glance at the hand, Levasseur and his brother concluded it was not real. It had a look of dried rawhide.

“We thought it was a prop,” he said. “I touched the fingers on it, and I thought, ‘It can’t be real.’ “

Levasseur photographed the hand with his cell phone camera and e-mailed the image to his wife, who works in Waterville at the district attorney’s office. While she was looking at it on her computer, a retired Maine state trooper saw the image and said he thought it was a real hand.

Levasseur called Jespersen, who contacted the woman who had owned the house. He also called the state police, who came to the house, tested ashes in the stove and interviewed the former owner.

Police concluded that the hand had been ripped off 50 to 80 years ago. They also seized the hand because it’s illegal to possess such a body part.

The previous owner claimed she had gotten the hand from a man down the road, who is now in his 80s and remembers his father having the hand.

“She had heard it was from a farming accident,” Jespersen said.

JOKESTARTERS:

• Talk about the ultimate hand-me-down (BOING!).
• The painter who found the hand now has a new vocation to add to his resume: hand job (BA-OOOM!).
• Once Fox News heard that this was a right hand, they swooped in and purchased it for $50,000. It’s getting its own talk show, to be called “Get A Grip With The Right Hand.”

SOURCE:

• MaineToday.com