It's Darwin's Birthday!

Today is the 200th anniv. of Charles Darwin's B-day! Happy Birthday, Chuck! Me and my homies the chimps salute you! Cheers! 

Yea! Thanks, WenVan!

In honor of this day, there is a guy near us who calls himself The Reptile Man and tells a "Darwin Awards" story. Ever heard of the Darwin Awards?

So, this Reptile Man, has a small, private reptile zoo with all kinds of snakes, tortoises and such, and he goes around to schools, cities and parks to educate folks about reptiles, how cool they are and how they serve our ecology. He has this huge white anaconda that he lets folks drape around their shoulders and body as they stand in front of the audience, and he turns a huge tortoise loose through the crowd, asking folks not to try to pick it because it weighs 70 pounds.

On to the story. He talks about how generally safe we are now around snakes. The most common venomous snake in Washington being the rattlesnake, he says that these will usually slide away from you if they hear you coming. To illustrate how very, very few deaths we have now related to snake bites, he tells the story of the last rattlesnake bite death in the state. These two guys were out camping in Eastern Washington, got drunk and decided to play catch with a live rattler. One guy was bit and died. (Most folks who get bit can make it to medical attention in time.) The Reptile Man loves to add that theory of the survival of the fittest (smartest) sure does work! Those boneheads win a Darwin Award!

I love the Darwin Awards!  The site is at http://darwinawards.com/ ; and there are currently four books out.  It is truly incredible how crazy some people can be.

My personal favorite is the guy in Renton, WA, who decided to rob (of all things) a gun shop.  In a state where three-quarters of the people have concealed-carry permits, and the other quarter don't have the permits but still carry.

The guy had to walk around a black/white police patrol car that was parked at the front door of the gun shop.  He had to pass a uniformed cop who was talking to the owner.

He walked to the middle of the store, pulled out a gun and fired a few rounds into the ceiling and yelled, "This is a holdup!"

The cop and the shop owner shot and killed him.  Every customer had their guns out and were covering the cop and the shop owner, but no one fired.

The guy had no record, not so much as a traffic ticket.

Sue

Yep! The Darwin Awards are great! Leah has loaned me a couple of the books about them. More trivia: I just discovered that it's also the 200th anniv. of Abraham Lincolns birthday. So here's to Abe as well! I didn't realize they had the exact same birth dates until today.