"Excuse me, sir. Can I interest you in some Lizard Scout cookies?"
Attanai Thaiyuanwong of Samutprakarn, Thailand was not interested, though he and his neighbors know this particular giant monitor lizard well. In fact, they've named it Selena after singer Selena Gomez.
Selena (the lizard, not the human) tried to get inside Thaiyuanwong's house through the front door, but was unable to do so. Giant monitor lizards are deadly predators that sometimes prey on humans, so Thaiyuanwong took immediate and decisive action against this threat: he recorded a video and posted it on Faceook.
Why do you have to go through the hassle of putting your belongings through an x-ray machine whenever you enter a courthouse? This is why. Someone might try to slip a dangerous iguana into the bowels of justice. So it's a good thing that the deputy sheriffs of Boulder County, Colorado were paying close attention. The Daily Camera quotes a police representative:
"At the Justice Center only service animals are allowed. No iguanas...even if it goes through the X-ray machine."
Boulder County sheriff's spokeswoman Carrie Haverfield said the person was turned away.
"Apparently he was there with some friends, so he waited outside with his iguana," Haverfield said.
The Toronto Blue Jays faced off against the Philadelphia Phillies. Blue Jays player Kevin Pillar knocked a foul ball into the stands. This amazing dad partially rose from his seat and caught it with one hand--all while holding his sleeping daughter and a tray of food.
The father here is Brian Kucharik. He makes it look easy even though, in addition to his encumbrances, he caught the ball with his non-dominant hand.
Instagram member @konel_bread is a master baker with a flair for making surprise bread. That's a loaf of bread that has an image hidden inside. The picture appears with every slice.
A wild bull elephant approached the Bumi Hills Safari Lodge in Zimbabwe. He looked inside the windows and then waited.
The local humans saw that he appeared to be injured and dehydrated. So they called in a veterinarian, who tranquilized the elephant and examined him. He found that the elephant had been shot, probably by a poacher. Now Ben, as they have named the elephant, is on the mend. The Telegraph reports:
It was not clear when the incident took place but Ben survived the attempts on his life after the vet treated him and disinfected his wounds. Ben now wears a tracking device to ensure his improvement can be monitored as it continues healing on the property.
It was the winter of 1812. The Canadians, long covetous of superior American lands, such as Texas and California, waited for Lake Ontario to freeze over. Then they sent their moose-back cavalry over the ice to invade America.
Naturally, we sent them packing in short order. President Madison celebrated by lighting a cigar and, in the process, accidentally starting a fire in the city of Washington. But after firefighters put it out, the Americans and Canadians made peace and have kept it, however tenuous, ever since.
Skirmishes still break out occasionally. Recently, photographer Lisa Bell saw a Bald Eagle slap around a Canada Goose in British Columbia.
It's really dangerous to reveal mutant superpowers like this--and especially for something as trivial as a mug. Nonetheless, this waitress at the Posita bar in Moaña, Spain demonstrated her superhuman dexterity and reflexes when a mug fell off a high shelf.
She kicked it behind her back, sending it flying into a sink full of water. Her co-worker and customers reacted with horror when they realized that she's one of them.
In the natural order of things, children bury their parents. It is normal, but it is so very hard, too.
Bill Frankel and his siblings moved their elderly parents out of their house and into an assisted living facility. This was necessary because they couldn't take care of themselves anymore. 4 months later, Frankel's father died.
Then he found his father on Google Street View. He writes at Narrative.ly:
After he died, my parents’ house, which my siblings and I had been preparing for sale, was put on the market. When the listing came online, my brother called me, his voice shaking, and asked me to take a look at the listing. When I logged on, I understood why he sounded so shook up.
Google Street View, a Google Maps feature that allows visitors to see panoramic street-level views of a property, had captured Dad working in the yard – apparently oblivious that a Google car had just passed him. There he was in his white shirt, white shorts, white shoes with white socks.
There he was, totally in his element. How we wished he were still there.
At the time, I told the story to everyone, and posted on social media about his Google Street View encounter. And I frequently visited him online – logging on to introduce him to his grandchildren, but mainly just to make sure he was still there.
Later, Google Street View updated the phoot. For Frankel, it was like losing his father all over again:
That fact was more shocking than finding my father there in the first place, some three years earlier. I’m not an emotional person, but this revelation really overwhelmed me with sadness, especially as I broke the news to my wife and my siblings.
As my oldest sister said, being able to check in on Dad in the yard (even virtually) helped mitigate the guilt we felt for taking him out of his element in the first place. It was as if he spent the past few years “at home.”
Julio Balde of Newark, New Jersey first got involved in scouting 80 years ago. He fell in love with it and, a few years later, in 1942, founded Troop 102. Since then, he's taught hundreds of boys in several generations to grow up into the virtuous manhood that the Boy Scouts teach. New Jersey On-Line reports:
In the troop's heyday, there easily were 40 to 50 Boy Scouts. Troop 102 even had a drum and bugle corps and a color guard. There were 43 Eagle Scouts among its ranks, and eight of them earned scouting's highest honor in one year.
Now at 95, Balde is ready to retire and disband the troop. There are 6 Scouts in his troop and 4 of them are graduating from high school this year. And even if they weren't leaving, he finds that he can't keep up with the physical demands of leading the troop anymore. Now he's shutting down his office in a local Catholic church. His Scouts are stopping by to express their appreciation for everything Balde taught them:
Just as Balde finished talking about all the scout items, Bryan Llerena, 14, walked in from the other room where the celebration was taking place.
He's a former member of the troop and he came to say goodbye.
"Thank you for everything,'' Llerena said, shaking Balde's hand.
A man in Naples, Florida suddenly found himself in peril. He had consumed vodka but, sadly, an insufficient amount in order to accomplish his biochemical objectives. His girlfriend refused to buy more. So he called 911 to report the situation to emergency services dispatchers.
By the time that sheriff's deputies arrived, the alcohol deprivation victim realized that he may have made a mistake. He told the deputies that it was a prank. The Palm Beach Post does not report on whether the officers laughed in response, but it does say that they arrested the man for misusing 911.
Redditor SentioVenia says that this friend of his son has access to many different accents:
His father is German and his mother is Puerto Rican and teaches French.
He has a lot of fun giving the closing announcement at a Target store with different voices, including stereotypical Russian, Indian, and Southern accents.
Figment NYC is an annual art festival in New York City. Many participants build artistic miniature golf holes to create an entire course. For this event, NYC Resistor, a local makerspace, created a golf hole that looks like a cell. The object of the game is to penetrate the cellular membrane, then avoid the organelles, and finally land the ball in the hole.
You can find instructions on how to build your own cell golf hole at Instructables and watch a video showing people playing it here.
Perhaps, to the fish in your aquarium that you love, you're not just a Thing Which Provides Food. Perhaps you're a specific Thing Which Provides Food.
Researchers at the University of Oxford and the University of Queensland found that archerfish (Toxotes jaculatrix), like the one pictured above, is capable of distinguishing between human faces. This is a remarkable discovery, as it was previously thought that fish lack the cognitive abilities necessary. Phys.org reports:
First author Dr Cait Newport, Marie Curie Research Fellow in the Department of Zoology at Oxford University, said: 'Being able to distinguish between a large number of human faces is a surprisingly difficult task, mainly due to the fact that all human faces share the same basic features. All faces have two eyes above a nose and mouth, therefore to tell people apart we must be able to identify subtle differences in their features. If you consider the similarities in appearance between some family members, this task can be very difficult indeed.
'It has been hypothesized that this task is so difficult that it can only be accomplished by primates, which have a large and complex brain. The fact that the human brain has a specialized region used for recognizing human faces suggests that there may be something special about faces themselves. To test this idea, we wanted to determine if another animal with a smaller and simpler brain, and with no evolutionary need to recognize human faces, was still able to do so.'
Chuan-Bin Chung of Shu-Te University in Taiwan makes it look so easy. He quickly sketches out detailed drawings of the human from, from the skeleton all the way up to the muscles. It reflects how he teaches students to accurately depict the body. He tells Bored Panda:
Yes, we have a textbook. But we don’t read it, we draw it. Students, majoring in this area, cannot learn by just reading the pictures on books. Instead, we learn while drawing something. In my classes, students have to draw what I am demonstrating on the chalkboard.
Practice has made him perfect at his craft. Chung uses a straight edge, but otherwise creates these colorful and precise chalk drawings by hand. You can see more screenshots from his YouTube channel at Bored Panda.
