BEAST: Mexican Redknee Tarantula
SCIENTIFIC NAME: Brachypelma smithi
LIVES IN: North America
FEAR FACTORS: These furry spiders have huge needle-sharp fangs and bright red hair on their knees. And they’re as big as an adult’s hand. They use their bite to kill prey and turn its insides into an slurpy edible liquid.
THE TRUTH: These little creatures are relatively tame towards humans. They mostly eat mice, birds, insects, and other spiders. They can bite, but their venom is very weak and feels a bit like being stung by a bee. In fact, humans pose far more danger to these spiders than they do to us. They’re now endangered in the wild because so many people keep them as pets.
BEAST: Black mamba
SCIENTIFIC NAME: Dendroaspis polylepis
LIVES IN: Africa
FEAR FACTORS: The black mamba is a massive snake, growing up to 14 feet long. These giant reptiles can slither at up to 12 miles per hour, which makes them the fastest snakes on earth. Watch out! Before they bite, they rear up like a cobra. Their venom is deadly. Those who don’t receive antivenom right away can die within 20 minutes.
THE TRUTH: Black mambas are afraid of humans. Instead of using their speed for aggressive behavior, black mambas race to escape when they feel threatened. But if provoked, they will bite… multiple times.
BEAST: Gray Wolf
SCIENTIFIC NAME: Canis lupus
LIVES IN: North America
FEAR FACTORS: These mammals look like large dogs, but they’re much more aggressive and wild. They travel in packs and circle in to attack other large animals such as deer and caribou. A single wolf can eat up to 30 pounds of meat in one sitting. Gray wolves are known for their famously loud howls. Their noses are powerful and they can smell dinner from miles away.
THE TRUTH: Wolves may attack other animals including pets, but they usually stay far away from humans. There has never been a documented case of a wild wolf killing a human in the U.S. Biologists sometimes crawl into wolf dens to look at pups and the adult wolves will just run away.
BEAST: Red-bellied Piranha
SCIENTIFIC NAME: Pygocentrus nattereri
LIVES IN: South America
FEAR FACTORS: These fish, are best known their deadly, triangle-shaped, razor-sharp teeth. A school of hungry piranha can strip the flesh from the bones of a large mammal—say, a human—in minutes.
THE TRUTH: Despite their terrible reputation in movies and pop culture, piranhas rarely attack humans. In fact, red-bellied piranhas would rather eat fish and water plants than chow down on people. But they won’t hestitate to feed on animals that are already dead.
WHO’S AFRAID?
To fear or not to fear, that is the real question.
“As a child, I was more afraid of tetanus shots than, for example, Dracula.”
—Dave Barry
“Don’t let the fear of striking out hold you back.”
—Babe Ruth
“To be honest, I’m scared to death of roller-coaster rides.”
—Liam Neeson
“Fear makes strangers of people who would be friends.”
—Shirley MacLaine
“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.”
—Mark Twain
“Love will find a way through paths where wolves fear to prey.”
—Lord Byron
“I’m the kind of person that when I get up to go use the bathroom, I have this big long hallway, and I just know someone’s going to jump out and get me.”
—Britney Spears
“I have a fear of being boring.”
—Christian Bale
“A lot of people ask me when I do a stunt, ‘Jackie, are you scared?’ Of course, I’m scared. I’m not Superman.”
—Jackie Chan
EXPLODING URINE
Here’s a whiz of an idea!
FOR CENTURIES, some scientists (called alchemists until 1834) were obsessed with the idea of turning cheap metals like lead and iron into gold. They did all kinds of experiments, including this one: In 1669, a German alchemist named Hennig Brand urinated in a tub and let it stand for several days. He then boiled the putrified urine until all that was left was a stinking paste. He heated the paste, hoping that the vapors it emitted would settle into a container of water and condense into…gold. (Really, Hennig?)
It didn’t. What remained was a white, waxy substance that glowed in the dark. When Hennig exposed the substance to the air—Kapowee!—it exploded into flames! Brand had managed to isolate a previously unknown substance—white phosphorus.
“The discovery of white phosphorus was an important one in early chemistry,” wrote Theodore Gray in Popular Science magazine. Just mix it with water and you get phosphoric acid a chemical now added to skin-care products, anti-nausea medicines, dental cement, fuel cells, and…cola drinks. So, the next time you gulp down a cold Coke or Pepsi, say a big thank you to Hennig Brand’s incredible exploding pee!
DON’T BUG ME!
Here’s the buzz on our favorite creepy bug films.
JOE’S APARTMENT (1996)
BUG: Cockroach
PLOT: Joe (Jerry O’Connell) is a guy living in a horrible New York City apartment in a building slated for demolition. The place is filled with hundreds of mischievous, smart-alecky roaches who sing, and even have their own public-access cable TV channel. When Joe finds out an evil property developer wants to tear down his building, the cockroaches “call in favors from every roach, rat, and pigeon in New York City” to try to save the day. No cockroaches were smushed or otherwise harmed in the making of this movie.
THE WASP WOMAN (1959)
BUG: Wasp
PLOT: Janice Starlin (Susan Cabot) is a model who founded her own cosmetics company. Until now, she has always modeled for her company’s advertisements. But now that she’s in her 40’s (talk about old!), investors want her replaced by a younger model. In desperation, she consults a scientist working on a youth serum based on wasp hormones. And she’s so desperate to look young, she agrees to be the first human test subject. Bad idea: She’s transformed into a murderous queen wasp with huge bulging bug eyes and horrifying mandibles. (No more lipstick commercials for this lady.)
THE FLY (1958)
BUG: Fly
PLOT: Andre Delambre (David Hedison) is a brilliant but eccentric scientist who invents a teleportation device. Sounds like a good idea. If it works, the machine will instantly transfer people and things from one place to another. Bad idea: Delambre tries to transport himself, but a fly gets caught in the chamber with him. Result: their atoms mix together, turning the scientist into a giant man/fly hybrid.
THEM! (1954)
BUG: Giant ants
PLOT: This was the first of the “big bug” flicks. Police Sgt. Ben Peterson (James Whitmore) and his partner find a little girl wandering alone in the New Mexico desert. After they revive her, she screams out one word: “Them!” Them what? Them… ants! Turns out giant ants have been attacking the locals. New Mexico’s deserts were home to some of the era’s atomic bomb tests. And radiation from those tests caused common ants to mutate into giant man-eating monsters that threaten civilization. To make things worse, two queen ants have flown to Los Angeles to start a new colony beneath the city. (Horrors!)
SKELETON KEYS
Future scientists can use your bones to unlock the secrets of who you were.
•You were male (or female). Men and women both have a pelvis, but the structure differs because women give birth. If the pelvis is wide and shallow, the skeleton belonged to a female. If it’s narrow, it was a male’s.
•You were healthy and wealthy (or not). Worn teeth show a poor diet. Straight, well-maintained teeth show good eating habits and enough money for dental care.
•You were tall (or short). The longer your forearm and leg bones are, the taller you were in life.
•You worked with your hands (or didn’t). If your wrist bones have tiny ridges in them, you probably did
manual labor for a living. Ridges form where muscles attach and pulled against the bone for years.
•You were right- (or left-) handed. Muscles become stronger and the bones get more worn down at the point where they’re attached to your bones. If your skeleton’s right wrist has more wear than the left, you were right-handed.
•You were accident prone. Cracks and holes in bones show childhood injuries. If you broke a bone as a kid, your skeleton can still show a tiny fracture many years after the break happened.
HARRY POTTY & THE CHAMBERPOT OF SECRETS
Eyewitness accounts of ghosts in the bathroom.
GRANDMA’S GOTTA GO!
A woman named Candice shared this story on a ghost-study website: “One day I was laying in my bed petting my cat. All of a sudden, something compelled me to take a picture of my bathroom. I asked my daughter to grab the camera, and I took a picture of the bathroom. When I looked at the photo, I saw a face right beside the toilet! It looks a lot like my grandmother who died a few years ago.”
THE LITTLE MER-GHOST
A mom and her son had dinner at a Little Mermaid theme restaurant called Ariel’s Grotto in Disney California Adventure Park. Here’s their story: “We finished our meal, and my son ran off to use the restroom. The next thing I know, he comes running out. He told me, ‘I was in there alone, when suddenly a few toilets started flushing, then I heard stall doors opening and closing! I looked out of the door and saw that no one was in the bathroom!’ He was totally freaked out. I tried to tell him that maybe someone came in and ran out, but he was completely insistent that no one came in!”
A POO-LITE SPIRIT
This bathroom ghost reminds us of Moaning Myrtle from the Harry Potter books…only much nicer. Here’s the story, shared by a grade school student named Jenny: “I remember one time at school, a janitor told me not to enter the bathroom on the third floor. It was rumored to be haunted. One day, I needed to use the toilet very urgently, so I asked my teacher for permission. I rushed to the nearest one. It was the one the janitor had warned me about. I went in, and no one else was in there. I sat down, and then I heard the sound of a little girl’s voice. She said, ‘Hello. Nice to meet you.’ She added, ‘Welcome to my toilet,’ and ‘Let’s play again tomorrow.’ I ran away as fast as I could and never used that bathroom again!”
THAT SINKING FEELING
A man named Steve D. shared this tale on About.com’s “Paranormal Phenomena” page: “A few years ago in South Yorkshire, England, I was woken up by the sound of water dripping in my bathroom. As I got up to turn it off, the light in the bathroom wouldn’t turn on, which was very daunting at the time. Nevertheless, I attempted to turn the tap off anyway, when a picture on the wall suddenly fell and landed in the sink. I ran back into my room! The next day, the light worked fine. To this day, I rarely venture into my bathroom at night.”
I SEE YOU!
A ghost hunter whose screen name is “EVP Researcher” specializes in finding EVPs. Short for “Electronic Voice Phenomena,” EVPs are recordings of ghostly voices. “On October, 18, 2008, I was investigating County Home and Lunatic House in Ohio. Way out back, there were two Port-A-Potties set up in the pitch dark. I went in and was going #1. All of a sudden, and very loudly, I heard a voice say, ‘I seeee you.’ It sounded like a snake. I laughed and said, ‘I hope not!’ I finished up and stepped outside. Nobody was around! I pulled my digital audio recorder out of my pocket and started recording. I said, ‘Say it again.’ The ghost said it again: ‘I see you.’ And then it said, ‘I talked to you earlier.’ I still don’t know why the ghost was peeking at people in the Port-A-Potties.”
•••
THE EVIL EYE
All over Greece people wear dark blue glass charms with eyes at their center. Taxi drivers dangle them from rear-view mirrors. Girls wear them on necklaces. People even hang them on their front doors. According to locals, blue glass eyes provide protection against “the evil eye”—a curse caused by envy or admiration. It’s a bit tricky: Someone can “eye” you without even meaning to. (Hey! Nice hair! Oops…) Some Greeks blame the evil eye for headaches, upset stomachs, or even unexplained deaths.
THE VULTURE
An Uncle John’s Totally Twisted Tale
Once upon an evening cloudy,
as I blasted music loudly
Over a quaint and boring schoolbook
that had made me start to snore…
From my window came a-tapping—
echoing, persistent flapping.
Was it just the music rapping…
rapping louder than the score?
“Open up!” a grim voice uttered.
“My claws are getting very sore.”
Only this, then nothing more.
When I saw what there awaited;
well, I very nearly fainted.
Great and hulking was the creature
hunched upon the sill—and reeking.
Said he, “I’m no cute canary.
That’s the burden that I carry—
but truly, I am not that scary.
Please, don’t fear me anymore!”
Then the raw, repulsive creature
swept in like my phys. ed. teacher,
Stood upon my homework drooling—
drooling on my bedroom floor.
Once inside, he licked his chops.
“Now that’s enough!” I shrieked. “Please stop.”
“I must be fed.” The vile one said.
It lunged. I dove beneath the bed.
“Come out…come out. You need not fear.”
It bit me then—right on the rear.
Its mouth gaped wide, and in I threw
socks and sneakers, Fido, too.
Plastic soldiers, a ball (or four),
jacks and marbles, an apple core…
At last, the vulture cried, “No more!”
“What have you done?” The dread bird moaned.
And from its gut there came a groan.
A bellow, a rumble, a belch did start.
It clutched its belly and ripped…a fart.
The stench that swept across my room
filled me with horror. I gagged. I swooned.
I quaked and trembled ’neath my bed.
It hopped to the window and turned its head.
The fiend, that nasty carnivore,
its yellow eyes my own implored.
Then quoth the vulture—“Nevermore!”
THE END
“Airplanes are a good place to write poetry and then firmly throw it away. My collected works are mostly on the vomit bags of Pan Am and TWA.” —Charles McCabe
UNLUCKY 13
This number has a seriously bad reputation.
•In Norse myth, a hero named Balder was killed at a banquet by the mischievous god Loki. Loki had crashed a party of 12, becoming the 13th person.
•In ancient Rome, witches met in groups of 12. They left the 13th spot open for the devil.
•In 1307, on Friday the 13th King Philip of France tortured the Knights Templar.
•No airport in Scotland has a gate 13, instead they have gate 12B.
•“Houston, we’ve had a problem.” Those historic words were spoken by Apollo 13 command module pilot Jack Swigert. The problem: an oxygen tank had exploded aboard the spacecraft. The date: April 13, 1970.
•More than 80 percent of high-rise buildings don’t have a 13th floor. Most skip right to floor 14.
•In Formula One racing, there is no car with the number 13.
•President Franklin D. Roosevelt never invited 13 guests to lunch. If someone canceled and it looked as if there might be 13 people at the table, he invited his secretary to join the group.
•Universal Studios has no studio 13.
•Fear of the number 13 has a name: triskaidekaphobia.
IN THE NEWS: DEAD THIRSTY
Once again, truth really is stranger than fiction.
REMEMBER WHEN YOU WERE LITTLE, and woke up from a dee
p sleep with a big thirst? That’s what happened to two-year-old Kelvin Santos in 2012. What made such an ordinary event newsworthy? The day before, Kelvin had been pronounced dead by his doctors in a hospital in Belem, Brazil.
Little Kelvin had been suffering from pneumonia and had stopped breathing. After his death, his grieving parents took him home. Family members held an all-night wake, gathering around the little boy’s coffin. An hour before his funeral was to take place, Kelvin sat up in his coffin. “Daddy, can I have some water?” he asked.
According to his father, Antonio Santos, everyone started to scream. They thought a miracle had taken place. “Then Kelvin just lay back down,” said Santos. “We couldn’t wake him. He was dead again.”
Santos rushed his son back to the hospital, but doctors confirmed that he showed no signs of life. The family delayed the funeral once more, hoping Kelvin would wake again, but his thirst for life seemed to be quenched. Kelvin was laid to rest in the local cemetery.
TOO ICKY TO EAT
Those weird-sounding ingredients on food labels may be creepier than you think!
CASTOREUM. The bad news: This food flavoring is from the castor sac scent glands of male and female beavers. These glands are (unfortunately) located at the butt end of the beaver. The even badder news: You probably can’t avoid eating the stuff. It’s usually listed on the label as “natural flavoring.”
CARMINE. Most people freak when an insect lands on their food. But what if insects are part of the recipe? Guess what? They are. Carmine is a red food coloring that comes from boiled cochineal bugs—a type of beetle. Because it can cause allergic reactions in some people, if carmine is in a food, it must be clearly listed on a label. By the way, carmine can be found in Good n’ Plenty, ice cream, lemonade, and grapefruit juice.
Uncle John's the Haunted Outhouse Bathroom Reader for Kids Only! Page 3