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Spiders are actually good and helpful things. You'd never know it by the way most humans react to them.
(Associated Press)
We return from vacation with two stories that make us want to never leave the house. Namely: In Kansas a teenage driver trying kill a spider that had crawled onto her lap caused a four-vehicle accident that sent 11 people to the hospital, police say. We would sneer were it not for the fact that we could totally see ourselves doing the same thing, only accompanied by shrieks of "Aieee! A spider! A spider! Aspideraspider!" Because yes, we really are that wimpy. Meanwhile, a driver in Texas who swerved in front of a motorcyclist, injuring two people, is attempting to blame that crash on a spider, too. Says a spider bit him "right in the tendon" of his leg, which we find improbable at best. (Because despite our blind panic concerning all things with more than four legs, spiders don't actually bite humans that often and can't actually bite into a tendon, though we still don't recommend doing a Google image search of "spider bite" if you want to ever feel safe - or anything but nauseated, really - ever again. True, most spiders can't bite humans and the ones that can rarely do, but when they do . . . dear God.)
CareerBuilder has released a roundup of weird reasons people had for missing work, including "employee said her cat was stuck inside the dashboard of her car," which we, personally, would definitely term a family emergency. In any case, read the list and save it to speculate with the next time someone calls in with the oh-so-vague, "I don't feel well."
Also from the Medical Weirdness file: Some guy in Argentina endured seven hours of surgery to remove a toothpick from his heart. That would be peculiar enough on its own, but it seems it got there after he swallowed it last year, something we cannot quite grasp, given our iffy grasp of human anatomy and our own struggle to swallow a single gigantic multivitamin every morning. The doctors have some kind of explanation for how the thing migrated there, but we were too busy goggling at the photo of the bloody toothpick to pay much attention.
We didn't actually plan to write a medical weirdness column this week, but since it appears to be shaping up that way, we're going with it. Some guy who might charitably be termed a bird lover and might less charitably be termed crazy had surgery to remove his ears so that he might better resemble his parrots. (Spoiler alert: It was a partial success. He looks nothing like a bird, but we're confident people are calling him a loon.) This is after having his face tattooed and getting several other modifications done to help him look more birdlike. Next up: He wants to find a doctor who can turn his nose into a beak. Think about that the next time you're waiting weeks for a non-emergency doctor's appointment.
To alleviate our growing sense that the world is going to hell in a handbasket and that that the handbasket is packed with spiders, we give you these photos of babies napping with cats. And then we have this kitty that was raised with ferrets and left with some adorable interspecies identity issues. Feel better? We do. Sort of.
Happy weekend! Don't battle spiders while you drive! You won't win!
-- Mary Mooney
mmooney@oregonian.com
503-412-7020; @MaryKnitsPDX