Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Wonderful World of Odd (29 page)

Five years of research and development had gone into the program; so had $14 million of taxpayers’ money. All we have to show for it is the world’s most expensive roadkill—when Acoustic Kitty died, the project died with it, written off by the the CIA as a total loss. (You’d never know it from reading the handful of documents about it that have been declassified, though: One document released in 1983 praised the design team, claiming their “energy and imagination could be models for scientific pioneers.”)

To this day, very little is known about Project Acoustic Kitty; most of the details are still classified, and the CIA won’t say why—their reasons are under wraps, too. Is it because cat-related espionage programs are still under way? Probably not. The most likely reason for all the secrecy, say intelligence experts: “To avoid further embarrassment.”

• Operation Boiler Rat.
In 1941 England’s wartime spy agency, the Special Operations Executive (SOE), came up with a unique way to cripple German shipping during World War II: They cut open a bunch of dead rats and stuffed them with plastic explosives and heat-sensitive detonators, then sewed them shut. The plan was to smuggle the rat bombs into Nazi-occupied Europe, where saboteurs would sneak them onto German ships and toss them onto the coal piles next to the boilers. The expectation was that the fire stoker would see the dead rat and get rid of it by shoveling it into the boiler. The resulting explosion would destroy the boiler and cripple the ship.

The dead rats never saw active duty; according to the BBC, “The first consignment was seized by the Germans and the secret was blown. The Germans were fascinated by the idea, however, and the rats were exhibited at the top military schools. Indeed, SOE files show that the Germans actually organized searches for these rodent explosives.”

• Project Airport Gerbil.
In the 1970s the MI5 section of the British Security Service tried to use gerbils to detect spies and terrorists as they passed through the country’s airports. Gerbils are able to detect increased adrenaline levels in human sweat when people are nervous; the idea was that passengers prepared to board would walk past a fan that would blow air into a hidden gerbil cage. If the gerbils smelled extra adrenaline, they were trained to press a lever that would alert security and also give them a treat. So how many terrorists did the gerbils catch? Not even one: The program was abandoned after researchers discovered “the gerbils could not tell the difference between terrorists and passengers who were scared of flying.”

*       *       *

Burlington, Vermont, is home to the World’s Tallest Filing Cabinet, made of dozens of individual cabinets welded together. (It’s also home to the eight-foot-tall “Shopping Cart Arch.”)

Investigations into 99% of UFO sightings have resulted in rational and very Earthly explanations. But then there are those few that simply have no explanation. Here are three cases that still have the experts baffled.

S
TRANGE BALL

In 1783 a London, England, man named Tiberius Cavallo, Fellow of the Royal Society, witnessed something that was unlike anything he’d ever seen before. “Northeast of the Terrace,” he wrote in his memoirs, “in clear sky and warm weather, I saw appear suddenly an oblong cloud nearly parallel to the horizon. Below the cloud was seen a luminous body, brightly lit up and almost stationary.” Cavallo described the object as a “strange ball” that was faint blue when he first saw it but then grew brighter and brighter. At one point, it flew high up into the air, then back down, and flew low across the horizon. After a few minutes, “it changed shape to oblong, acquired a tail, and seemed to split up into two bodies of small size.” The object then disappeared over the horizon in a flash, and the last thing Cavallo heard from it was a “loud rumble like an explosion.” Thinking the object may have crashed, Cavallo and other witnesses searched the area, but couldn’t find a craft or an impact crater. One possible explanation: The “explosion” may have been a sonic boom, created when an object goes faster than the speed of sound…but this happened more than 150 years before humans had invented any type of vehicle that could break the sound barrier.

While stationed in Earth orbit in September 1991, the Space Shuttle
Columbia
’s aft-mounted TV camera recorded video of several unidentified objects that seemed to be “swimming around.” The camera was focused on an experimental tether 44 miles away, and beyond that was the horizon of the Earth. The glowing white objects intermittently entered the frame, and then turned and swam around, like microbes swimming in a petri dish. After a few
minutes, a white flash appeared in the bottom left corner of the screen and suddenly, as if on cue, the little white objects all turned in unison and zoomed out of the frame. A few seconds later, a streak of light entered the frame and seemed to pause. Then, inexplicably, the camera rotated down toward the cargo bay, which was completely out of focus, then rotated back up…and the lights were gone.

NASA has dismissed the objects as “normal ice and debris” that sometimes float around ships in orbit. But these weren’t floating; they were moving independently of each other and changing direction. And the occasional “debris” NASA referred to is usually found close to the ship. The camera was focused miles away on the long tether, and some of the objects appeared to fly
behind
the tether. So what were these things? No one knows for sure. They are truly unidentified flying objects.

On the night of June 30, 2002, a UFO was sighted across nearly all of central China. It was first seen over the eastern province of Jiangsu, then moved west, over Henan province, then Xiaxi province, and then Sichuan. “At 10:30 p.m., an object resembling a flaming arrow appeared in the night sky,” wrote Henan’s
City Morning Post
the next day. “Then the tail of the fiery arrow opened up like a fan, which emitted bright light. The light-emitting section then changed into a crescent. A fireball on top of the crescent glowed brilliantly. Five minutes later, the UFO disappeared.”

Dozens of other newspapers reported the event, based on thousands of eyewitness accounts. The government had no explanation, except to say that it was definitely not a Chinese craft. Wang Sichao, a well-respected astronomer at Nanjing’s Zijinshan Astronomy Center, studied the reports and photographs, and offered this conclusion: “It is a dimensional flying machine. But whether it is of human origin or extraterrestrial, whether it is controlled inside or remotely, are still unknown. Maybe we will not be able to uncover the truth for many years, but human curiosity will never let us stop searching.”

Do you have a nagging, gnawing feeling that…well, just a nagging, gnawing feeling? You should—odds are you’re being slowly devoured by one of these tiny, vicious parasites right this very second.

E
ATIN’ YOU:
Fleas

BIO:
Fleas are tiny insects that just can’t live without blood. They can eat more than 15 times their body weight in blood in a single day. That includes the blood of dogs, cats, rats, rabbits, and any other mammal that’s handy‚ including you. They’re also “Super Bugs”: Fleas can pull 160,000 times their own weight (the equivalent of a human pulling 24 million pounds) and can jump over 150 times their own size (the equivalent of a human jumping about 1,000 feet).

DANGER!
In the right—or wrong—conditions, fleas are disease machines. They can transmit tapeworm to pets or humans, and can carry a number of diseases, including the blood parasite
babesia
, and the dreaded
bubonic
plague. Thankfully, they’re not nearly as bad as they were in the days before the vacuum cleaner. (Most eggs hatch in your carpet.)

EATIN’ YOU:
Bedbugs

BIO:
Tiny, painful, smelly, and disgusting, bedbugs are nocturnal, spending the day in walls, furniture, or your bed. At night they crawl out of the mattress and suck your blood. And they can wait up to a year in that mattress between feedings.

DANGER!
Their bites are often painful, but, thankfully, bedbugs are not known to transmit any diseases.

EATIN’ YOU:
Ticks

BIO:
Ticks are arachnids—not insects—and are related to spiders. There are no ticks that live solely on humans, but if there are no deer, cattle, birds, or reptiles handy, you’ll do. They have three life stages after hatching—larva, pupa and adult—and each stage needs a “blood meal” before morphing into the next stage. Ticks use a hunting technique known as “questing.” That means that since
they can’t hop or fly or run after prey, they wait around on grass or twigs for a host to come to them. How long will they wait? Years, possibly decades. And despite all that sitting they can leap into action the instant they sense a host coming by. One female tick can increase its body weight 200 times in a six-day feeding. Human equivalent: going from 170 pounds to 34,000 pounds in a week.

DANGER!
Only mosquitoes transmit more diseases to humans than ticks do.

EATIN’ YOU:
Chiggers

BIO:
Chiggers are the blood-sucking, infant larvae of mites, but before they can grow up, they must eat. They prefer rodents and lizards, but they’ll happily dine on you. These ravenous babies digest skin cells by spitting up powerful enzymes. Irritated skin cells react by building a hard mound around the tiny hole created by the enzymes, forming a “straw” (called a
stylostome
) through which the chigger continues to suck your mushed skin.

DANGER!
Chigger bites are possibly the most irritating and itchy bites in the world—and the sores can itch for
weeks
—but they’re not known to carry any diseases. Old wive’s tale: Putting nail polish over the hole will suffocate the submerged parasite. Wrong! Chiggers do not burrow underneath the skin. If you have sores, you probably already scratched the chiggers off.

EATIN’ YOU:
Face mites

BIO:
What’s that on your eyelid? It might be one of these microscopic mites. They live in the pores and hair follicles of the face, especially around the nose and eyelashes. They plant themselves head-down in a pore or follicle, and happily live there feeding on sebaceous secretions and dead skin debris.

DANGER!
Usually you wouldn’t notice them, but bad infestations can cause the face to become polluted by the excrement and corpses of these invisible bugs. That and their eating of hair roots and oil glands may cause hair loss, rashes, and rough skin. They are not known to transmit diseases.

EATIN’ YOU:
Head lice

BIO:
These bloodsuckers live their entire lives on the human scalp and hair. They puncture your skin with special piercing/
sucking mouthparts and feed two to six times a day. They’re particularly prevalent among children, who can spread them easily by sharing hats and combs, and by playing games such as “I’m gonna rub my lice-infested head against your head…because it’s fun!” (But personal hygiene is irrelevant—they’ll live on anybody.)

DANGER!
The bites may itch, but head lice aren’t dangerous.

EATIN’ YOU:
Crab lice

BIO:
Also permanent human residents, these larger lice live in the warmer, moister climes of pubic and armpit hair. They’re sluggish: If not disturbed, one can live its entire life within a half-inch of where it was born, but, like all lice, can be passed to other people through close contact. Not gross enough? Crab lice can also live in beards, moustaches, eyebrows, and eyelashes.

DANGER!
Like head lice, you’re only in danger of embarrassment from crab lice.

EATIN’ YOU:
Human river fluke

BIO:
This flatworm is contracted from eating infected fish, and primarily targets humans. They live in your bile ducts and liver tissue, as well as blood, and can grow up to an inch long and can live inside you for 10 years.

DANGER!
Symptoms can range from none…to death, for heavy infestations. (There have been cases where one person housed more than 20,000 of the parasites.) They are most prevalent in Asia, where raw and pickled fish are dietary staples.

EATIN’ YOU:
Mosquitos

BIO:
Contrary to popular myth, mosquitos do not live on blood. They survive on nectar and other fluids sucked out of flowers. But females take a “blood meal”—they need the protein to develop their eggs. You can’t hide: Mosquitoes home in on their prey using specialized organs that can sense heat, carbon dioxide—which you just exhaled—and other gasses from up to 100 feet away.

DANGER!
Mosquitoes traveling between hosts can transmit several diseases to humans, including malaria, sleeping sickness, and elephantiasis. Mosquitoes are the most deadly animal to humans on earth, causing more than 1,000,000 deaths a year.