The red leviathan had risen from the abyss to consume the symbol of the glory of America.

Fortunately, these Canadians were on site to rescue it. John Ilett and his friends, salmon farmers, came upon the scene off the northern tip of Vancouver Island. They closed the distance, hooked the beast on a pole, and pulled it off. CNN quotes Illett:

Ilett said he's been working on the water for about 20 years and admits he's seen incredible things, but this encounter ranks as the coolest to date. "It's moments like this why I love my job and being out in the environment where I can work and live," he said. "It's just amazing."

Illett has been reading comments on social media discussing whether or not his team should have intervened and said it's a different feeling when you're watching the situation unfold in front of your own eyes.

"Am I at fault because I'm human and I felt compassion for the bird?" he said. "At the end of the day both animals are alive and well and they went their separate ways and we feel pretty good about what we did."

Thank you, Canada.

-via Richard Hernandez

Oh, sure, a lot of you were skeptical of the duct-taped banana being a work of art. But it sold for $120,000 before a performance artist ate it.

Now that's art.

And so Dave Pollot is continuing the banana meme with this gorgeous landscape featuring a duct-taped banana attached to a mountain. He is selling at auction to benefit a charity. So far, the price is $4,500.

That's a far cry from $120,000. But let's admit it: taping a banana to a wall requires skill worth $120,000.

A stick was a unit of measurement in medieval England. 25 eels is a stick. 10 sticks is a bind.

Why is this important? Because that's how your landlord expects his rent to be paid.

Medieval scholar John Wyatt Greenlee has a lot to say about eels. Eels were a big deal back then, when they were plentiful and good eating. They could be used, to an extent, as a form of currency. Greenlee has found that during the 10th and 11th Centuries, there were 221 known eel rental agreements requiring the payment of 539,785 eels. He has an interactive map of eels rents for your convenience. So pack your hovercraft and pay up.

Michele Banks has a good question. I speculate that these digital eel services were available in more modern markets, such as London and York.

-via Marilyn Terrell | Photo: John Wyatt Greenlee

The faithful dog in Ipeúna, São Paulo, Brazil, saw that his human packmate was injured. He desperately needed canine support, especially as other, possibly hostile humans were converging around him.

Eventually, he broke free from captivity and rushed to his packmate, placing himself between his friend and numerous enemies. If it came to a fight, he would fight.

You can see the moving full video here. May all humans be worthy of such dogs.

-via Marilyn Terrell

Üziel Valles was a happy man, for he had a truck. It was a lovely and vigorous Chevrolet Silverado. Alas, it had one flaw: a yellow hood on an otherwise white body.

John Payan was also a happy man with a Silverado. He, too, loved his truck with the exception of one flaw: a white hood marring the appearance of the yellow body.

Valles posted on a private Facebook group called Denver Dropped Trucks. His cri de coeur was for a white hood. The Internet summoned his truck's soulmate, which was owned by Payan. Jalopnik describes their love story:

Enter: John Payan, who just so happens to have an all-yellow truck with a white hood. Is this destiny? Proof that soulmates do exist? I can’t say for sure, but whatever the case, it’s still a better plot arc than anything that made its way into the Twilight series. [...]

He and Payan even still appear to chat, which is the only thing I could have ever asked for from this story. I could not have accepted any other conclusion. These two fellas swapped hoods, and now they’re bros for life.

-via Core77

America's favorite Christmas movie is now a live ice skating entertainment show. Die Hard on Ice is . . .

Okay, there's no actual movie yet. It's just a parody trailer. But keep in mind that movie Machete started out as just a fake trailer (NSFW) bundled with the Tarantino film Grindhouse. We could see a Die Hard on Ice movie. This time, John McClaine won't be barefoot on broken glass.

-via Dave Barry

Gambino the cat is a hospitable sort. He's open and casual with his welcoming meow of "well, hi." I don't know if he's a true Southerner, but he's got a bit of the old South in him.

Hi right back atcha, fella. Sit down a spell and chat.

-via Twisted Sifter

When you look like an elf, play up the role to your advantage, as Lady Demosthenes did.

For the rest of us orcs, well . . . we have fewer options. No one wants us behind the counter at Starbucks. We can do pretty well hanging onto a garbage truck, though.

-via Aelfred the Great

The tech retailer Game developed the original Christmas Tinner back in 2013. It was for gamers in a hurry to eat their Christmas dinner and get back to playing. There was no need to cook. Just open the can and start eating with a spoon. It contained 12 separate courses in layers.

It wasn't an option for vegan gamers, as it contained many animal products. To accommodate their needs, the company has debuted its new vegan option. Metro describes its delicious layered courses:

There’s vegan gravy, mushroom wellington, pigs in aubergine blankets, tofu and stuffing, as well as your go-to winter veggies including squash, sprouts, and parsnips.

Each of those layers sound pretty good, it’s just the aspect of it being crammed into a cylinder that might (definitely) alter the tastes and textures.

There’s also a dessert layer, including vegan custard and choccy cake. Which raises the obvious question, are festive feasters meant to meticulously section off the dessert portion, or simply enjoy a bit of sweetness with every savoury bite?

Yum! Where else could you possibly get red cabbage and chocolate cake in the same mouthful?

-via @ProperOpinion | Photo: Game

David Keller of Prescott Valley, Arizona thinks that it's too easy to call a pet a "service animal" and take it everywhere. It's a system that can be abused, leading to people bringing bags of snakes into public libraries.

To prove his point, he went to a website that registers service animals and created a registration for a beehive as a service animal. AZ Family reports:

A quick web search turns up many service animal registration sites. But Keller's stunt showed that some of them do very little to verify the animals they're registering. "They're very silly. They don't mean anything," said Jaymie Cardin, who trains service dogs at AZ Dog Sports in Scottsdale. "You can go pay for a registry on one of those web sites, and basically, you're just paying for a piece of paper and to put a name on a list."

Cardin says these sites do highlight a real problem -- people trying to pass off pets as legitimate service animals. "Training is how you tell whether it's a service animal or not," Cardin said.

-via Dave Barry | Image: AZ Family

Chris Long of Reno, Nevada received a bone marrow transplant. Four years later, his colleagues at the Sheriff's Office tested his DNA to find out of the transplant had affected his DNA. If a transplant could alter DNA evidence, it could impact their criminal investigations.

The result was shocking: the sperm in Long's semen contained no trace of his own DNA. It all belonged to his donor, a German man. The New York Times explains what happened:

Mr. Long had become a chimera, the technical term for the rare person with two sets of DNA. The word takes its name from a fire-breathing creature in Greek mythology composed of lion, goat and serpent parts. Doctors and forensic scientists have long known that certain medical procedures turn people into chimeras, but where exactly a donor’s DNA shows up — beyond blood — has rarely been studied with criminal applications in mind.

Brittany Chilton, a criminologist, found that chimera DNA had confused other criminal investigators in the past:

And it has misled them, Ms. Chilton learned once she began to research chimerism. In 2004, investigators in Alaska uploaded a DNA profile extracted from semen to a criminal DNA database. It matched a potential suspect. But there was a problem: The man had been in prison at the time of the assault. It turned out that he had received a bone marrow transplant. The donor, his brother, was eventually convicted.

Abirami Chidambaram, who presented the Alaska case in 2005, when she worked for the Alaska State Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory in Anchorage, said she had heard about another disconcerting scenario since then. It involved police investigators who were skeptical of a sexual assault victim’s account because she said there had been one attacker, though DNA analysis showed two. Eventually the police determined that the second profile had come from her bone marrow donor.

-via TYWKIWDBI | Image: quapan

"You can't have Christmas without Star Trek, right?"

Truer words were never spoken, Mr. Ahern.

Martin Ahern of Moncton, New Brunswick gradually built up his annual Christmas light display. It's become his hobby. All year, he prepares his precisely engineered lighting arrangements. Most recently, he's launched a 16-foot scale model of the Enterprise NCC-1701, no bloody A, B, C, or D. It's made of wood and duct tape, but flimsier craft had made it into interstellar space.

-via Geekologie | Image: Global News Canada

Musician Dimitri Manos offers this unique object: a record with six playable . . . well, sides isn't quite the right word.

Each side of the two-sided record has three overlapping circles, each of which has its own track. You can play by placing the record on the turntable with the right hole among the five in the center.

In this video, Mike Dixon gives a demonstration of how it works. Manos's band American Monoxide composed a piece specifically to make use of the record's unique properties. Because the record makes a chirping sound when the needle crosses two overlapping tracks, the composition incorporates that sound.

Content warning: foul language.

-via Core77

British tinkerer Colin Furze builds amazing things and screams (which is why I usually watch his videos muted). In the past, he has made a lamp powered with a chainsaw motor, a bumper car with a 600 cc engine, and a bicycle with wheels made of ice. They're amazing, unconventional machines. When the apocalypse comes, you want him on your survival team--especially since he has literally built a bunker for that purpose.

Whatever trouble is coming, he saw it long ago in a galaxy far, far away. To promote the new Star Wars film, he built a functional landspeeder. Yes, it has wheels instead of hover engines. But it's otherwise a completely-scaled up model of a landspeeder toy--the ideal commuter vehicle.

-via Nag on the Lake

Meghan Hughes used her powers to transform into a unicorn. Then she brought the warmth of her love to her neighbors by clearing snow in her neighborhood in Schenectady, New York. CBS 6 Albany reports:

She says she's pleasantly shocked by all the attention.

“I thought it would be fun to put the Halloween costume on and bring some joy to something that isn't very joyous,” she said.

Meghan says she may have a business on her hands! She tells us people have asked her to snow plow their driveways and even attend birthday parties for kids.

-via Swiss Miss