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Monday, August 25, 2014

Daily 2 Cents: Mysterious 'Red Blob' Washes Ashore -- The Laundry Room -- Coywolves Have Taken Over The Northeast


Mysterious 'Red Blob' Washes Ashore

UPDATE: Marine experts are slightly scratching their heads over a 'mysterious blob' that washed up on Mudjimba Beach earlier today but they think they may have identified it.

A spokeswoman for Queensland Museum said marine experts had taken a look at photos of the blob and said it was difficult to tell without examining it however they said they felt it was a sea slug.

"It's hard to pinpoint without examining it and knowing the size," she said.

"Their nearest guesses, based on colour and the side 'frills' is that it might be a Spanish Dancer sea slug."

EARLIER: A red, 'mysterious blob' has washed up on Mudjimba Beach this morning, confusing passers by.

Twitter user Debbie Higgs @Debz73 contacted The Daily this morning after she noticed the unusual find on her morning walk.

The Mt Coolum woman said she was taking some photos at Mudjimba Beach when she stumbled across the find.

"It looks like a slug, it's got ribbing," she said.

"I've never seen anything like it."

Ms Higgs said she saw the mystery creature, which has since died, wash up onto the beach.

"I gave it a poke and it wriggled a bit. It's not a turtle as it hasn't got any legs."

"It's bright red."

She said she was determined to find out what it was so she grabbed a tea towel from her car and used it to take it home with her. - sunshinecoastdaily

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The Laundry Room

I was living in the basement suite of an older building with my brother. We had moved to the 'big city' from small town Canada to go to University and our landlord and his girlfriend lived right above us.

We had been there for about 5 months and during a blizzard on a cold January night, I was alone in the apartment studying. I decided to go to bed around 10 and was laying in my bed, reading and listening to the blizzard outside.

I started to hear noises coming from the laundry room, which was abutted to my bedroom wall. At first, I thought it might be from the storm and really tried to dismiss it. After 15-20 minutes, I realized the noises WERE coming from the laundry room! It sounded like someone was trying to move the laundry machines.

I ran to my apartment door and peeked out to the hall (I was a naive 20 year old, not fully comprehending city life yet) but didn't hear/see anything. I closed the door and called my landlord and told him what I was hearing. He dismissed it as being the blizzard. I hung up and went back to my bedroom.

I went back to bed and didn't hear anything. After about 1/2 an hour, the noises started up again, MUCH louder and more intense; like someone was kicking/banging on the machines. By now, it's about 11:30 and I'm pretty freaked out! I wasn't sure what to do as my landlord was probably asleep and I didn't want to wake them up again but I was really scared; I ran upstairs to his apartment and knocked on his door.

I had, indeed, woken him up. I told him something was making noises in the laundry room and the noises were getting louder and more intense. I also told him I was alone and scared. He looked a little pissed that I woke him up but he told me he'd be down in a few minutes. I went back to my apartment and waited.

He came down and I opened my apartment door, watching as he went through the hall doorway and into the laundry room.

What happened next, scared the living sh*t right out of me!

I heard him start to say "hey, what's..." and then saw him stumble backward, across the hall, into the wall behind him, while saying "holy f**king sh*t"! He bolted right past me, and ran up the stairs to his apartment. I closed my door right quick and locked it. I could here him yelling to his girlfriend through my apartment ceiling!

I cowered in my apartment, not knowing what the f**k to do! About 15 minutes later, I hear a knock at my door and "it's the police". I open the door and there's my landlord with a couple of cops.

This is what he had seen: When he opened the laundry room door, he saw a guy standing with his back to the door. He slowly turned around, facing my landlord, with one hand covering an eye and his other hand was raised, holding an axe! He started to move toward my landlord, like he was going to attack him and that's when the landlord bolted upstairs.

They inspected the laundry room and machines--NOTHING HAD BEEN DAMAGED OR MOVED?!?! So WTF had I heard? The guy was gone & they never found him.

I ended up staying on the couch at my landlord's. We moved out shortly after. - Reddit.com

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Chef killed by cobra as he tried to cook it

The man had been preparing to cook a rare Asian delicacy when he was bitten by the dead snake's head.

The Indochinese spitting cobra had been killed beforehand so that it was ready to be used in the meal, but when chef Peng Fan went to prepare the snake for use in the dish he received a deadly bite from the deceased reptile's head as he was throwing it in the bin.

Unfortunately the venom, which was some of the deadliest in the animal kingdom, acted too quickly and Fan died before he could receive the treatment he needed in hospital.

"It is a highly unusual case, but it appears to be just an accident," said a police spokesman. "He prepared the snake himself and was just unlucky. There was nothing that could be done to save the man. It was just a tragic accident."

Snake expert Yang Hong-Chang maintains that the reptiles can still bite and inject venom in to a victim even after the head of the animal has been separated from its body.

"It is perfectly possible that the head remained alive and bit Peng's hand," he said. "By the time a snake has lost its head, it's effectively dead, as basic body functions have ceased, but there is still some reflexive action." - Yahoo

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Coywolves Have Taken Over The Northeast

Humans are not newcomers when it comes to messing around with nature. While we haven't created Frankenstein's monster yet, what we do messes with the natural world. One recent example is the creation of the coywolf — a hybrid of the coyote and the wolf that is also known as the Eastern coyote.

These animals have a completely new genetic make up: Their genes are about 1/4 wolf DNA and 2/3 coyote DNA, the rest is from domesticated dogs. They were created when previously separate wolf and coyote populations merged in the land north of the Great Lakes.

While the grey wolf and the coyote are each other's closest living relatives, the two animals separated evolutionarily 1 to 2 million years ago. These hybrids have only really emerged en force during the last few decades, as wolves were hunted and forced north and coyotes moved east from the Great Plains.

According to The New York Times' Moises Velazquez-Manoff: "[The coywolf] can be as much as 40 percent larger than the Western coyote, with powerful wolflike jaws; it has also inherited the wolf's more social nature, which allows for pack hunting." Read more at Business Insider

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Sean & I will be recording the 'preview' show on Thursday. The podcast should be available sometime Friday at our Podbean feed link on the Arcane Radio website.

We are coming to take you to the next level of terrestrial radio. Be prepared...

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