taint.org: Justin Mason’s Weblog

What Jeff Killed is a blog from Shadow Hills, CA, documenting the murderous antics of Jeff, a large ginger tomcat:

we provide Jeff with food and water; however, this does little to lessen his killer instinct. To humans, Jeff is an exceptionally good-tempered and friendly cat; to rodents and other small animals, he is death itself. It could be that Jeff likes to bring us gifts to repay our hospitality. Perhaps he is simply a hardwired killing machine. All we know for certain is that he hunts down a wide variety of small animals and disembowels, decapitates, and dines on them. Often.

This was passed on by the lovely C, who noted ‘number of kills is about the same, cat for cat’ — indeed, Bubba, our cat, certainly had a similar career in Irvine, CA. However, I notice that as yet, there are no cases where Jeff has left the entrails and decapitated head of a rabbit lying up against the sandals of the neighbour’s 6 year old daughter… that was fun.

Tags: animals, bubba, cats, gore, nature, pets, wildlife

Well, I’m back… it appears that Google Maps link I posted wasn’t too much use in deciphering where I was going; sorry about that. Myself and C spent a fun week and a bit, driving up to Kings Canyon and Yosemite, backpacking around for a few days, then driving back down via the 395 via Bishop, Mammoth Lakes, Lone Pine and so on.

Kings Canyon: Unfortunately, not so much fun; we had the bad luck of encountering what must be the tail end of the mosquito season, and spent most of our 2 days there running up and down the Woods Creek trail without a break, entirely surrounded by clouds of mozzies. Possibly this headlong dashing explains how we ran into so much other wildlife — including a (harmless) California Mountain King Snake and, less enjoyably — and despite wearing bear bells on our packs to avoid this – a black bear…

We rounded a corner on the trail, and there it was, munching on elderberries. Once we all spotted each other, there were some audible sounds of surprise from both bear and humans, and the bear ran off in the opposite direction; the humans, however, did not. We were about 500 feet from our camp for the night, so we needed to get past where the bear had been, or face a long walk back.

Despite some fear (hey, this was our first bear encounter!), we stuck around, shouted, waved things, and took the various actions you take. It all went smoothly, the bear had probably long since departed, but we took it slow regardless, and had a very jittery night in our tent afterwards. After that, and the unceasing mozzie onslaught, we were in little hurry to carry on around the planned loop, so we cut short our Kings Canyon trip by a day and just returned down the trail to its base.

Yosemite: a much more successful trip. There were many reasons, primarily that the mosquito population was much, much lower, and discovering that the Tuolumne Meadows Lodge – comfortable tent cabins, excellent food, and fantastic company — provided a truly excellent base camp.

But I’d have to say that the incredible beauty of Tuolumne Meadows and the Vogelsang Pass really blew me away. I don’t think I’ve seen any landscape quite like that, since trekking to Annapurna Base Camp in Nepal. I’m with John Muir — Yosemite and its surrounds are a wonder of the world.

Lee Vining: had to pick up a sarnie at the world-famous Whoa Nellie Deli. Yum! After all the camping, we stayed in a hotel with TV, got some washing done, and watched scenes from a J.G. Ballard novel play out on NBC and CNN. Mind-boggling.

Mammoth Lakes: A quick kvetch. Mammoth is possibly the most pedestrian-hostile town I’ve ever visited. They have a hilarious section of 100 feet of sidewalk, where I encountered a fellow pedestrian using those ski-pole-style hiking walking sticks, and entirely in seriousness. Was the concept of walking so foreign in that town that long-distance walking accessories were required? I don’t know, but it didn’t make up for the other 90% of the streets where peds were shoved off onto the shoulder, in full-on ’sidewalk users aren’t welcome here’ Orange County style.

On top of that, the single pedestrian crossing in the main street spans five lanes of traffic, with no lighting, warning signs, or indeed any effective way for drivers to know whether peds were crossing or not. Unsurprisingly we nearly got run over when we tried using the damn thing. Best avoided.

I’m amazed — it’s like they designed the town to be ped-hostile. Surely allowing peds to get around your town is a bonus when you’re a ski resort for half of the year? Meh.

Anyway, back again, a little refreshed. Once more into the fray…

Tags: backpacking, bears, california, camping, fun, hiking, kings-canyon, lee-vining, mammoth-lakes, national-parks, tuolomne-meadows, vacation, wildlife, yosemite

Health: via Forteana, BBC: Invasion of the Bodysnatchers. It seems the Beeb is producing a new TV series about parasites, and the PR blitz starts here (and also in The Sun).

Interestingly, halfway through the BBC article, there’s this:

Soon after travel writer, Broughton Coburn, returned from Nepal he began to experience regular, inexplicable nosebleeds. They continued for three weeks until an embarrassing encounter in a teashop made him realise that something was seriously wrong.

As he was being served, the waiter took one look at him and fled in horror. Broughton chased him down the street urging him to tell him what was wrong. But the boy would only point, wordlessly, at his nose.

Broughton returned home and sat in trepidation in front of a mirror. His patience was rewarded when a brown worm-like creature emerged from his right nostril and looked around.

‘I swear it had two beady eyes on it. And it came out two or three inches, looked around and then retracted. I thought it was a dream, a vision of some sort.’

In shock, Broughton rushed off to his doctor who tried to remove the mysterious creature. But it wasn’t going to give up its home easily.

‘He had this thing pulled out eight or ten inches and I’m looking at it cross-eyed down the end of my nose, and he’s looking at it, he has a look of absolute horror on his face. And the thing came off. And there was this leech.’

This is the same story (modulo minor differences) as this oft-posted story, ‘A True Story from the Himalayas’, which is captioned

This is a supposedly true story I received from an associate. I have no additional evidence as to its veracity but it makes a good tale. — Editor’.

No better way to announce an urban legend!

So is the Beeb printing a UL? Or did an author called Broughton Coburn really pick up a nose-leech in Nepal shortly after arriving with the Peace Corps, and before becoming a successful travel writer? It could be, I suppose…

Update: it’s looking more and more likely, given:

This Hong Kong Medical Journal report on the removal of a large leech from a woman’s nose:

The woman said that one month before her symptoms developed, she swam and washed her face in a stream while hiking. Doctors checked other members of her hiking group and found another leech in the nose of a man who washed his face in the stream, the journal said.

And this NY Times interview with a leech researcher, who notes:

“There are all sorts of things out there like Dinobdella ferox, which means the terrifying and ferocious leech,” Dr. Siddall said. “It lives in eastern Bengal, and it will literally crawl up your nose and lodge in the back of your throat.”

Back to the Broughton Coburn account. An Amazon reviewer comment notes that this story appeared in Travelers’ Tales Nepal, a book by Rajenda S. Khadka. In addition, Broughton Coburn has a website nowadays, so someone could always ask! Finally, this copy of the full account has some more research.

While on the subject of Nepal, here’s an incredible cautionary tale — don’t do the non-tourist treks in Nepal without a guide, if you value your life:

A wall of furiously churning brown water was racing toward us. Behind it the lodge by the river where we had lunch an hour earlier was disintegrating. The water level had increased another ten feet and was annihilating everything in its path.

yikes. Lots more great travel stories, including almost swimming in shit, diarrhoea in a west African minefield, and strangling muggers in Peru on that site, BTW. And he can write!

Ireland: Knick Knack Paddy Hack — ‘Paul Clerkin and Mick Cunningham explain how their crazy-ass website p45.net suckered the (Irish) media.’

Tags: bbc, broughton-coburn, disgusting, hkmj, leech, leeches, nature, nepal, nose-leech, wildlife

Amazing! Porton Down is the UK’s center for research into chemical and biological weapons, and has been since 1916. Not the nicest place you could think of — by a long shot.

Well, it turns out that the massive no-go buffer zone around Porton Down, existing for 87 years, has preserved ‘the largest remaining continuous tract of chalk downland in Britain’. ‘The farming revolution of the 20th century, the development, the tourism, have all passed it by.’ ‘The disrupters are the large-scale inputs of chemicals, the pesticides, herbicides and artificial fertilisers that are the essence of intensive farming. At Porton Down, these have never arrived.’

As a result, it’s now an amazing wildlife heritage site. Quite hard to get to see it — but good to know it’s there! Thanks to Bruce Sterling for forwarding this along the Viridian list.

Reminds me of something I heard about Chernobyl — since the area around it is heavily irradiated, and therefore a no-go area for humans, it’s become a de-facto wildlife refuge (even if half of the animal inhabitants are sterile as a result.)

Tags: area, center, chemical, farming, nicest, place, porton, research, result, wildlife

The BBC reports on one animal-borne disease which I, for one, do not want to see making that zoonotic jump to humans:

Gruesome VD hits Tanzania baboons

Scientists are investigating a horrific new venereal disease which is affecting baboons in Tanzania. … Male baboons are particularly badly hit by the new disease, says Elibariki Mtui from the African Wildlife Foundation in Arusha. ‘The genitals kind of rot away, then they just drop off,’ he said.

Tags: african, bbc, disease, elibariki, foundation, gruesome, jump, mtui, venereal, wildlife