What they do is protect the ears of calves from frostbite. Some are made of yarn, canvas, or fleece.

Calf earmuffs have apparently been around for at least decades, but they're new to me, as I've never lived on a farm or ranch. I gather that they've been invented by various cattle ranchers as the need developed. WMTV News in Madison, Wisconsin describe's one dairy farmer's reinvention of calf earmuffs:

The idea behind "Moo Muffs" came after Poad's family lost their barn in a fire. She was looking for any way she could to keep her newborn calves warm and to avoid frostbite.

"We bought calf jackets and tried to make it work," said Poad.

In addition to calf jackets, she also bought a pair of calf earmuffs. In an effort to try to save money, she asked her aunt, Kim Ewers, if she thought she could make a pair for her. Ewers has been sewing much of her life and and owns her own embroidery business.

"The pair she as talking about was just fleece," said Ewers.

Ewers was afraid if the fleece got wet it could do more damage than good.

"I said, 'Holly if we do [the fleece] and it happens to be snowing, raining, or whatever it will be like putting an ice pack on these calves ears and they might totally fall off,'" said Ewers.

All of last year, the two put their heads together to come up with a design that would be more functional. After some trial and error, the two settled on this particular design.

-via TYWKIWDBI | Photo: Smith's Country Cheese

Slip out of your bra and hand it over to the Carolina Waterfowl Rescue organization in Charlotte, North Carolina. The organization says that the clips on them can be used to help knit together the shells of injured turtles. Keenan Freitas, a representative of the organization, explained to WLBT News:

The wire that holds the broken portions of shell together is fastened to the turtle with these things that usually might lock together lingerie.

“You basically wire the shell back together,” Freitas says.

It’s affordable for this nonprofit – and sustainable.

“You can recycle something that would go into a landfill,” Freitas says. “And I mean, they’re helping a turtle. Who wouldn’t want to help a turtle?”

Freitas says when it’s time to release the reptiles back into the wild, they wear the glue down a little, the clasps pop right off, and they’re good as new.

-via Dave Barry | Photo: Carolina Waterfowl Rescue

Moses McCormick is an American who learns languages as a hobby. He invented the FLR Method of language acquisition and used it to learn . . . well, more languages than I can keep count of. His YouTube channel is filled with videos of him casually meeting people and switching between languages in the middle of conversations. In this video, he uses, among many others, Cantonese, Somali, Zulu, and Russian.

-via Geekologie

Danielle Boinay, an artist in Los Angeles, paints alluring gouache images of mermaids, centaurs, and other fae folk whose glimmering manes reveal complete landscapes. To add to the mystically timeless flavor of her work, some of her pieces are rendered on petrified wood. You can see more of Boinay's work on her Instagram feed.

Sixteen years ago, I dropped to one knee to present a ring to my future bride as we relaxed at the alligator pond behind her library. It was an unoriginal approach and I would have done better to take that of Dustin Marshall of Hertfordshire, UK.

Marshall got this charming cat tattoo etched into his butt, then mooned her after a game of pool at a bar. He did so, planning to take advantage of a rule of the game that requires one player to drop his or her pants under certain conditions. Metro explains:

Lindsey, 30, from Hertfordshire, explained: ‘He orchestrated it so he would get “seven-balled”, where the black is sunk when one player still has all seven of their balls on the table.

‘Our rule is you have to pull your pants down if that happens, so he just pulled down his trousers.

‘I looked over and said: “What’s that on your bum?”

‘He walked over to me and I could see that it said: “Will you marry meow?” with a picture of our cat.

As you can expect from such a romantic gesture, she said 'yes'!

-via Dave Barry | Photo: Lindsey Norman

Patrick Ewing chose exactly the right driver for his ride. He's a skilled performer and can apparently drive a car safely using only his feet!

It's a good thing that he got the fabric puppets in the settlement or else he'd have to use just shadow puppets.

-via Super Punch

Call not this gentleman a fop or a toff. Zach Pinsent, 25, of Brighton, East Sussex, UK, is making a statement. It began when, at the age of 14, he symbolically burned his blue jeans, thus drawing a boundary between his old life and his new one. Since then, he has dressed in the high fashions of Regency era of British history.

He's a tailor who offers garb like his own to men of refined tastes. You can see his sophisticated menswear on Instagram. Pinsent tells BBC News that:

I've never had the wish to dress normally. I did that for so many years and hated it. So what's the point of returning, once evolved? . . . Wearing what I wear--it makes me feel ten feet high.

-via Instapundit | Photo: Pinsent Tailoring

Luigi Kemo Volo is an graphic designer and illustrator in Naples, Italy. He loves Disney characters, so he interacts with them through the magic of Photoshop. Here, his fishing mishap starts a chilly relationship with Ariel.

Do you think that a gong is just a big piece of sheet metal that you slap with a stick? No. It's much, much more, especially when gongmaster Sven Meier caresses it like a lover. He's one of the craftsmen behind Paiste Gongs. Here, he gives a delicate, controlled demonstration of what he can do with just slight touches of the instrument.

-via Althouse

Although they may look really weird from the outside, when baker @izumickey0719 slices these loaves open, we see impressively detailed portraits of characters from anime, Disney, and Pixar films.

I discovered The Fish Whisperer through the above video, but his entire channel is fascinating. He's a fisherman who keeps fish and turtles as pets in a pond. He even names them! He regularly hand-feeds bass, catfish, and turtles with little shad fish. Impressively, he appears to keep all 10 fingers and thumbs! His catfish Shadow, though, has tried to pare down that number.

For this video, The Fish Whisperer strapped a waterproof GoPro camera onto the back of a red eared slider turtle to see the world from his point of view.

-via Twisted Sifter

Martin Muller was kayaking near Mount Isa, Queensland, Australia, when he came upon an olive python swallowing an entire crocodile.

Was he in danger? Of course not! Olive pythons are only the second largest snake species in Australia and they're not venomous.

The photo sequence shows the python safely eating the crocodile, then staring at Muller. The Australian Daily Mail talked to a blasé wildlife expert about the encounter:

GG Wildlife Rescue Inc owner Michelle Jones told Daily Mail Australia that she keeps two olive pythons as pets. 

'It's common for them to eat pretty much anything if they can fit it in their mouth,' she said.

Ms Jones added that the pythons can 'unhinge their jaw' to extend their bite - and it was was not uncommon for them to attempt to eat a crocodile.

-via Dave Barry

Artist Michael Pederson, also known as "Miguel Marquez Outside," leaves humorous installations in public to amuse people. In this case, though, he's provided a public service.

Alex, the owner of Neatorama, has made it clear that I am not allowed to just scream in frustration while at work, so a private shouting room would be helpful. It could also serve other functions, such as a private crying room, since that, too, is apparently forbidden under the draconian editorship of Miss Cellania.

Quilling is the art of cutting, curving, and shaping paper to create forms out of edges of curled paper. Sena Runa is a master of it. In 2015, she quit her job has an HR manager to pursue her art. As you can see from the examples of her work on her Instagram page, her skill and passion has taken her far.

Tying shoes is sooo last century. We can do better. Thanks to shoe designer Jeff Shen, we have. His Wacky Pack line explores novel if not revolutionary ways of attaching shoes to your feet, including drawstrings, zippers, and top straps that snap on and off.

A suggestion for Mr. Shen: make shoes that attach with proprietary screws, like a slightly off-size Torx. Include a single matching wrench with each pair of shoes.