A female poodle fell out of the sky onto the grounds of Shorncliffe Nursing Home in Sechelt, British Columbia.

How she came to be flying over the nursing home is explained by the deep talon marks in her back and sides, showing she was probably the unwilling passenger of a hungry eagle that had picked her up but eventually found her 18 pounds too much to hold on to.

May, her ribs broken, her body lacerated, was found by nursing staff May 2 and delivered to the Sunshine Coast SPCA.

The fall injured her, says BC SPCA official Lorie Chortyk, but the whole unnerving ordeal likely saved her life.

May showed signs of longtime neglect, including rotted teeth and claws that were growing into her paw pads. She is recovering after medical intervention by the SPCA, but the Society needs donations to pay for her care. http://www.vancouversun.com/life/Hungry+eagle+inadvertently+swoops+poodle+away+better+life/4793134/story.html -via Arbroath

(Image credit: SPCA)

Will Carlough grew up with Star Wars (as did many of the internet generation) and was an avid fan. He discusses the process of recovery in an essay at Slate.

In high school, I read more Star Wars novels than I did regular books—somewhere around 15—and I own three copies of each of the films' soundtracks. I even won an award from almighty Lucasfilm itself for the hours I spent making a Star Wars fan movie.

It's been a rough dozen years for us Star Wars fans. The release of The Phantom Menace split the community in half, the gushers (people who loved it) and the bashers (people who didn't). If you can't tell from my equating fandom with alcoholism, I am a basher. Each of the next two movies, Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, was worse than the last, and it became increasingly hard to identify as a fan. After all, the whole franchise was based on six feature films, and I hated half of them (and only sort of liked Return of the Jedi).

Read how each of the stages: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance, relate to his continuing recovery from Star Wars fandom. Link

Scientists and health officials are pretty certain that the smallpox virus exists in only two places in the world: at the CDC in Atlanta and in a government laboratory in Russia. The World Health Organization declared the disease eradicated in 1979, and the two remaining supplies are for research only. This week, the 64th World Health Assembly will take up the question of whether these two stores of the virus should be destroyed.

Now, public health officials are divided on how to ensure that the disease stays eradicated. Some say our best bet is to keep the remaining samples of the virus safe and continue to study them, then destroy them at a later date; others say the safest course is to destroy them now, once and for all.

A list of pros and cons for keeping smallpox around are listed at 80beats. Link -via Carl Zimmer

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This video from Bruton Stroube Studios is "designed to showcase food in a beautiful and unusual way." But really, it's just fun to see flying food! A second video showing how it was done is posted at Stroube's site. Link -Thanks, James McKenzie!

The following is an article from the science humor magazine Annals of Improbable Research.

by Steve Trimberger

With the loss of Pluto, the number of major planets in our solar system has dropped to eight. If the current trend continues, then come April 13, 3703 the solar system will no longer have any major planets. My analysis, below, suggests several possible causes, for the loss of major planets.

The Solar System’s Major Planets
Major planets have been the objects of study for thousands of years. Their positions and numbers have been accurately reported and have been subject of numerous observations by literally billions of observers. In this study, we analyzed published reports of the number of major planets and used statistical analysis software to identify trends in the data. These trends show a disturbing result, specifically, that the number of planets in the solar system has been decreasing since the middle of the nineteenth century. Extrapolation leads to the conclusion that the solar system will have no planets by the end of the next millennium.

Table 1. Reported Numbers of Planets in the Solar System

Historical Observed Planet Count
Table 1 shows the number of reported planets by various researchers. The reports in table 1 are selected from the literature and are representative. The planet counts have been confirmed extensively in numerous publications  as well as by huge numbers of anecdotal accounts. The data are irrefutable, although, as noted in table 1, the dates of some of the early data points are estimates. Sensitivity analysis shows that the conclusions in this paper are not particularly sensitive to variations in these dates.

All you need to do is turn off the lights to unleash this little girl's dreams -or you might call them nightmares. Link -Thanks, Richard Schumann!

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When you drop Mentos into a plastic Coke container, you might have a rocket. Or it might not work at all. Or it might surprise you! -via I Am Bored

This looks like a painting, but it is a photograph. Photographer Frans Lanting took this picture of camel thorn trees in Namib-Naukluft Park in Namibia. The orange is a sand dune rising in the background. It was chosen as the photo of the day for today, but it is also a part of the National Geographic feature story Namibia's Coastal Parks, about how a newly-independent nation set aside large tracts of land to be protected for posterity. Link -via The Daily What

(Image credit: Frans Lanting)

Have you ever seen someone open a champagne bottle with a saber? The act is called sabrage, used for ceremonial occasions. The cork and the glass collar of the bottle are removed in one smooth move, leaving the neck of the bottle intact. You can learn to do it, if you have a proper saber. Do you?

When performed correctly, as noted above on a suitably chilled bottle of Champagne, the cork and glass ring will fly away, spilling little of the precious wine and leaves a neat cut on the neck of the bottle. Now, the Champagne is ready to be enjoyed. Not to worry, the internal pressure (100 psi) of the Champagne bottle always ensures that no glass falls back into the bottle making it safe for consumption.

If you do try this, let us know how it turns out! Link -via the Presurfer

This furniture dolly has a bookshelf built right in! Or maybe it's a bookcase that happens to be on wheels. Either way, it's a neat idea from StudioDz, available for sale at Etsy. Link -via Boing Boing

The United States built a fence along the Mexican border, but the mud along the Rio Grande is too soft to support a fence. In Brownsville, Texas, that means it was built a couple of miles north the river, which cuts off an American neighborhood from the rest of the U.S. The residents are not happy.

"I'll say right off the bat that I'm a conservative – I believe in hard work and I believe our border needs to be secure," says Debbie Loop, whose 15-acre citrus farm is on both sides of the fence. "But when they signed this fence into law, nobody stopped to think Texas isn't Arizona or California. Our border does not run dirt to dirt. Any idiot could have told them that. My grandchildren now live on the wrong side. Who is going to protect them? Who protects me when I'm in my orchards after dusk? I just want to work hard and earn a living. But they've changed this place forever."

Link -via Metafilter

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Charlie took his sister Ginny to the movies. What Charlie knew, but Ginny didn't, was that Ginny's boyfriend Matt had bought a slot during the previews. And we have her reaction on video during the whole thing. -via reddit

It is once again time for our collaboration with the always amusing What Is It? Blog. Do you know what this thing is? Can you take a wild guess?

Place your guess in the comment section below. One guess per comment, please, though you can enter as many as you'd like. Post no URLs or weblinks, as doing so will forfeit your entry. Two winners: the first correct guess and the funniest (albeit ultimately wrong) guess will each win a T-shirt from the NeatoShop.

Please write your T-shirt selection alongside your guess. If you don't include a selection, you forfeit the prize, okay? May we suggest the Science T-Shirt, Funny T-Shirt and Artist-Designed T-Shirts?

Check out the What Is It? Blog for more pictures of this object. Let your imagination run wild, and good luck!

Update: Porkhurst was the first of many with the correct answer. This object is a lunar tong, designed for picking up moon rocks! However, he did not select a shirt. Swami won a t-shirt for the funniest answer:

If you are familiar with "Treasure Island", you will recall the luau when John Silver is barbecuing ribs and he almost burned off his beard rearranging the fire, that's what inspired him to invent the device pictured above: Long Tong Silvers.

Groan!

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There are lot of road-crossing sloths on YouTube, but this little guy in Costa Rica gets a hand from a fellow who has done this before. I never noticed before how much longer a sloth's front legs are compared to their rear legs. The green color comes from a specific type of moss that sloths host as camouflage. -via Arbroath

Photographer Guido Mocafico takes pictures of snakes, but it wasn't always so. He was once deathly afraid of them!

The first time I photographed a snake up close, I nearly fainted. I’d always found them terrifying, but also fascinating—an attraction-repulsion I think most people experience when they encounter beautiful animals that creep or crawl. My goal with this series is to explore that intersection of human emotions.

Shown are three colorful bush vipers of the same species. See a collection of Mocafino's snake portraits at National Geographic. Link

(Image credit: Guido Mocafico/Hamiltons Gallery)