Snakes: Maybe creepier than fish

Oh holy lord. Decapitated snakes CAN STILL BITE.



As if I weren't skeeved out by snakes enough...

Australia is hereby crossed off the list of places I would consider living

Imagine walking into your charity store to find a hole in the ceiling, vomit on the floor, and all kinds of things messed up. You'd probably conclude a burglar broke in, vomited everywhere, made a mess, and left, right? Only...why didn't the burglar take anything?

Oh, it's because it's not a burglar. It's a 19-FOOT PYTHON. Which lay undetected in the charity store for a whole day after the break-in.

That's something that apparently happens in Australia, according to NPR/The AP:

Australian police were mystified by a chaotic crime scene including a hole in the ceiling and a smelly pool of vomit-like liquid — until they found the culprit was a 5.7-meter (19-foot) python.

The massive snake weighing in at 17 kilograms (37 pounds) was captured a day after a suspected burglary was reported at a charity store in Queensland in northeastern Australia.

"Its head was the size of a small dog," Police Sgt. Don Auld said Wednesday.

Before they found the python, investigators' working theory was that a human burglar with an appetite for destruction — and a serious illness — had gone on a rampage inside the St. Vincent de Paul store in the small town of Ingham.

"We thought a person had fallen through the ceiling because the roof panel was cut in half," Auld said. "When they've hit the floor, they've vomited and then staggered and fallen over. That's what we thought anyway."

Police now suspect the python entered the store through the roof, which was damaged in a cyclone two years ago.

The animal then plummeted through the ceiling, knocking over dishes, clothes and other items, before relieving itself on the floor. It somehow managed to hide from officials until staff spotted it lying alongside a wall the next day.

Can I just repeat what happened? A 37-pound 19-foot-long snake apparently lived in the roof of a building for some period of time, then fell through the ceiling, "vomiting"* everywhere, and then HID FOR A WHOLE DAY. I don't even want to GO to Australia anymore**, lest I wander into a place with a giant snake hiding out! I have the heebie-jeebies just thinking about it.

Dear god.

*The "vomit" turned out to be "snake urine and feces," by the way.
**Lies. I totally do. I need to snorkel the Great Barrier Reef before it's dead!

A little bodily horror to help you celebrate your Jewish New Year. Happy 5773!

Just when I'm feeling all warm and fuzzy about science, I come across this, which I guess is a good reminder that scientists routinely alert us to horrors along with pretty pictures from other planets. What kind of horrors am I talking about today, you wonder? Oh, just the Demodex mite, a mite that lives on your face, has sex on your face, eats your face, dies on your face, and, when it dies, explodes its feces all over your face. Which apparently your face doesn't like--the mite's feces explosion may be the cause of Rosacea, according to a recent article in the Journal of Medical Microbiology.

Want to know more? Here are some fun facts I just found out about our buddy Demodex and his pals:

Picture from here, text from here.

• The mites spend most of their time buried head-down in our hair follicles, munching on your face.
• They’re most commonly found in our eyelids, nose, cheeks, forehead and chin. But they're not limited to your face! They've also been found in the ear canal, nipple, groin, chest, forearm, penis, and butt. Time to start squirming.
• Demodex mites do not have an anus and can therefore never get rid of their feces...while alive. Instead, they store their waste in their abdomen, which gets bigger and bigger until they die, at which point they decompose and release their waste all at once in the pore or whatever tiny hole they are hiding in at the moment.
• Their preferred place to have sex is at the rims of your hair follicles. 
• After sex, the female buries herself within a follicle or sebaceous gland, depending on the type of mite. Half a day later, she lays her eggs. Two and a half days later, they hatch. The young mites take six days to reach adulthood, and they live for around five more. 
• Did you catch that the entire life of the Demodex occurs over the course of two weeks or so? That means that, if you're harboring this vile creature, one (or more) of your pores is awash in feces every two weeks.
• Just like me, Demodex mites hate the sun. So, they only come out of your pores at night to find another mite to mate with. Think about this: while you sleep, nasty little mites are having sex on your face. *shudder*
• Wonder what your chances are of harboring these face-eaters? Well, there's good news and bad news on that front. Bad news first: If you're "elderly," your chances are close to 100%. If you're a newborn, GOOD NEWS, you do not have any Demodex in your face. We apparently collect the mites as we go about our lives, perhaps from direct contact with infected people, perhaps from dust motes on which Demodex have hitched a ride. Age also seems to have something to do with it--according to the author of the Journal of Medical Microbiology piece, "Mite density starts to rise in the sixth decade of life and stays at the same level until the eight [sic] decade of life. Mite density is very low in young adults, even though their levels of sebum production, a potential source of food for mites, are very high." So: if you're still relatively young, you are potentially mite-free. If you want to remain so, you should probably avoid rubbing your face on anybody else's face at night, particularly on the faces of people older than sixty. And vacuum a lot if you live with someone elderly--or better yet, have them vacuum for you.

Well, I've about exhausted the limited reading I've done on gross gross Demodex. But if you want to know more, I encourage you to read this and this and this! And then cheer yourself up by eating some apples and honey and wishing your Jewish friends happy new year.

No more swimming, I guess

First the ocean, now freshwater...is nowhere safe to swim?*

Always on the lookout for a nicely terrifying story for this blog, my good friend Tiffani just alerted me to this doozy:

Brain-eating amoebas blamed in three deaths

Yup, you read right. Apparently, there's a amoeba that lives in "warm freshwater" (mostly lakes, rivers, and hot springs...but also improperly sanitized swimming pools) that can travel up your nose, into your brain, and cause your death within 1-12 days (according to the CDC, an outfit I tend to trust).

The unfriendly little organism that is capable of such feats is called Naegleria fowleri, and it's made national news this week because it has killed three people this summer--so far. That's quite a lot, considering that only 32 cases were reported to the CDC in the decade spanning 2000-2010. (Actually, maybe the number of 2011 deaths is not "a lot"...more like an average amount. But I'm still worrying.)

CNN describes in simple terms what the Naegleria fowleri does:

The amoebas enter the human body through the nose after an individual swims or dives into warm fresh water, like ponds, lakes, rivers and even hot springs. ...When an amoeba gets lodged into a person's nose, it starts looking for food. It ends up in the brain and starts eating neurons. The amoeba multiplies, and the body mounts a defense against the infection. This, combined with the rapidly increasing amoebas, cause the brain to swell, creating immense pressure. At some point, the brain stops working.

Um....YIKES.

What you are probably wondering at this point (because I sure was wondering!) is what the symptoms of an amoebal takeover of your brain are. I'll tell you. Well, I'll let the CDC tell you:

Initial symptoms...start 1 to 7 days after infection. The initial symptoms include headache, fever, nausea, vomiting, and stiff neck. Later symptoms include confusion, lack of attention to people and surroundings, loss of balance, seizures, and hallucinations. After the start of symptoms, the disease progresses rapidly and usually causes death within 1 to 12 days.

It's like you think you have meningitis, but nope! The news is much worse! Just when you thought it couldn't possibly be worse.

What's most terrifying about the menace of Naegleria fowleri is not necessarily that it exists (though this is frightening indeed), but that a) it is 95% lethal (only ONE person in the US has survived an infection), and b) infection incidence increases when weather gets hot for long periods of time, and um, Global Warming, anyone?

So there you have it: Swimming in warm freshwater can lead to your death via an amoebal brain swarm. This has been your scary public service message of the day. You're welcome!

Also look! A diagram!

*I should probably say "safe and pleasant," as I suppose chlorinated and saltwater pools are a fairly safe swimming option. But swimming pools are icky.

Home for a week = Critical thinking faculties are on vacation

Some random stuff:

I secretly think that our children are not going to grow up in a world that is better than the one we grew up in.  Neither does Newsweek, I infer, as they recently published this article: Today's youngest Americans are likely to be worse [economically] off than their parents.

Meanwhile, while we're becoming poorer and poorer, we're also possibly harboring eyelash lice.  EYELASH. LICE. Let that sink in.

And! Even worse, our dishwashers are out to get us.

But on the upside, rising gas prices might make us skinnier.

Gratuitous picture of my nephew, with whom I spent the whole day.

Rethinking my move to the Northeast?*

I have a kind-of job interview today (via Skype, oh, modern technology you never cease to amaze me), so I don't have a lot of time for blogging. Rest assured, ye few who read this thing, I have received your topic suggestions and I will get around to looking into them, eventually. Probably. In the meantime, let's explore a danger I currently don't have to worry about...but might if this new job thing works out and I move back to Massachusetts. And the globe warms.

Terrifying Brown Spiders Moving North with Global Warming

Fascinating: Wikipedia suggests that
you do not use coins for scale

Now, I'm not really afraid of spiders (unlike my sister, who literally cannot be in the same room as a spider, much to my chagrin--I can't tell you how many spiders I have killed on her behalf), but I might have to revise my stance on arachnophobia because of a new spider I just learned about: The brown recluse spider.

I had never heard of the brown reculse spider before I read this Good post that warned of a (potential) shift in their habitat due to global warming.  Apparently, though, Fox News claims it is "America's most feared spider." And we know if Fox News said it, it must be true.

According to the article I read, there's a chance that by 2050-2080, the brown recluse spider's habitat will have moved up to the northeast, encompassing many of the states I dream about living in (the left and right columns are based on different estimates of global warming changes):

Source

Thankfully, I'll probably be dead or close to dead by the time I have to worry about this. Thus I experience only minor panic!

****

Back to reality. (Oh! There goes gravity!)

Although Google imaging "brown recluse spider bite" is a TERRIFYINGLY BAD IDEA, I'm sad to report that it really doesn't seem like these spiders are all that scary.  The University of California, Riverside goes to great lengths to inform people that really, you have very little to worry about. Nevertheless, this description of a brown recluse spider bite from Ohio State University makes me just a little scared, regardless of the actual risk:

The bite of the brown recluse spider can result in a painful, deep wound that takes a long time to heal. Fatalities are extremely rare, but bites are most dangerous to young children, the elderly, and those in poor physical condition. When there is a severe reaction to the bite, the site can erupt into a "volcano lesion" (a hole in the flesh due to damaged, gangrenous tissue). The open wound may range from the size of an adult's thumbnail to the span of a hand. The dead tissue gradually sloughs away, exposing underlying tissues. The sunken, ulcerating sore may heal slowly up to 6 to 8 weeks. Full recovery may take several months and scarring may remain.

Gah! I don't want an open lesion the size of an adult hand on me!!

****

Eep! It's about time for me to get ready for this Skype interview business. I'll leave you with this: Think you have a brown recluse spider bite? You probably don't. Also, spider myths!


*Alternate title for this post, thought of too late: Based on the amount that I go outside, I think we should start calling me the White Recluse. (It's funny 'cause it's true.)