The Pope was having a shower. Although he's very strict about celibacy, he occasionally felt he needed to exercise the Papal wrist, and this happened to be one of those occasions.
Just as he reached the Papal climax, he saw a photographer taking a picture of the Holy seed flying through the air.
"Hold on a minute!" said the Pope, "You can't do that - you'll destroy the reputation of the Church!"
"This is my lottery win", said the photographer, "I'll be financially secure for life with these photos!"
So, the Pope offered to buy the camera from the photographer, and after much negotiation, they eventually settled on a figure of $2,000,000.
The Pope clothed himself and headed off to to destroy the images on the camera.
Along the vast Vatican hallways, he bumped into his personal housekeeper.
Being a bit of a photography buff, she noticed the camera and said, "That looks like a really expensive digital SLR camera, how much did it cost you?"
Not being one to lie, the Pope replied, "...two million dollars..."
"TWO MILLION DOLLARS!" replied the housekeeper. "They must have seen you coming!"
"Webcam" is based on actual events and was shot entirely on a computer's webcam. The filmmakers hope that it will make people think more about the technology that we use every day and the effects that it can have on all of us.
An Amish farmer walking through his field, notices a man drinking from his pond.The Amish man shouts: "Trink das wasser nicht. Die kuhen haben dahingesheissen." (Which means: Don't drink the water, the cows have shit in it.)
The man shouts back: "I'm a Muslim, I don't understand. Please speak in English."
The Amishman says: "Use two hands, You'll get more."
A man and his wife, moved back home to Kentucky, from Indiana. The husband had a wooden leg, and to get insurance on it back in Indiana it cost them $2000 per year!
When they arrived in Kentucky, they went to an insurance agency to see how much it would cost to insure his wooden leg. The agent looked it upon the computer and said: "$39." The husband was shocked and asked why it was so cheap here in Kentucky to insure it because it cost him $2000 in Indiana!
The insurance agent turned his computer screen to the couple and said,"Well, here it is on the screen, it says: Any wooden structure, with a sprinkler system above it is $39. You just have to know how to describe it!"
A husband, bride and bridal party was left in the deep end when the pier they were standing on while posing for wedding pictures collapsed - pitching them in to a lake. When Eric and Maegan Walber planned their big day they never expected that Maegan would be better with a swimming cap than a veil.
After their wedding meal the couple went outside with their friends for some wedding pictures at the Bay Pointe Inn on Gun Lake in Shelbyville, Michigan. After the bridesmaids, grooms men, bride and groom got settled on the pier ready for the pictures that would last a lifetime, it was not long before things went wrong:
'We were out there for probably 30 seconds, standing on the dock, and it started to lean and tilt,' said Mr Walber. 'We went right under,' he added.
Luckily the new Mrs Walber's evening wasn't completely ruined as she was able to change in to the dress that she had worn to the rehearsal dinner the night before.'I came up laughing,' she said. 'It makes for a good story,' she said. 'We'll be telling our grandkids.'
A family dog is getting some big credit for saving a 14-month-old boy from drowning in Marcellus, Michigan. Patricia Drauch told the Cass County Sheriff's Department she walked into their backyard garage on Sunday afternoon to get a shovel to dig out some "prickly" plants in the backyard of her home. One moment, she said, her youngest son Stanley was walking along beside her; the next, he wasn't. Drauch immediately began to search for Stanley all over the backyard and soon found him in the family pool. "It was scary. His lips were blue. His eyes were rolled back," Drauch said. "It was the scariest feeling and the image stays in your head for a long time." At first, she said, it looked like Stanley was floating. But when she looked closer, she saw her son wasn't under the water.
The family dog Bear was in the pool, holding Stanley out of the water on his back. "[Bear] wouldn't move in the pool," she said. "He didn't bark. He didn't move. It was like he was afraid to move at all until I got Stanley up out of the pool and that's when [Bear] came up out of the pool with me. Bear was trying to keep Stanley up so he wouldn't die," said Stanley's brother Kyle Drauch, who is 7 and was there when his mother found Stanley in the water. Stanley was unresponsive when Drauch pulled him from the water. "He wasn't responding so my mind is going to the worst - that I was too late," said Drauch. She tried to call 911 for help, but said she heard a "beep" and the call wouldn't go through.
So she gathered up her sons and started to drive to the Marcellus Fire Department, which is about two miles from her house. While on the road she was able to get through to 911 on her cellphone. While Drauch was on the phone with 911 dispatchers, Stanley regained consciousness. "On the way, he barfed up a lot of water and then he started to respond, but she kept going and she was just a little over the speed limit," said Kyle. Drauch soon arrived at the fire department, where emergency personnel examined Stanley, who was conscious, alert and in good condition. He was taken to a Three Rivers hospital by his parents to be checked out, but was soon released. On Monday Stanley was well enough to play with Bear in the family's yard. Drauch said X-rays showed there wasn't any water in Stanley's lungs. She said that's because of Bear.
"I'd always told [Bear] since he was 4 weeks old that these are your babies, watch out," said Drauch. "He has big paws and they were little and I didn't want him to step on them, so it paid off teaching him to watch out for them." Cass County Undersheriff Rick Behnke said though there were no witnesses, but authorities did find vomit in the family car, which is consistent with what happens when water is ingested and then expelled. "From the information we have, it seems to pan out," Behnke said. "It's an amazing story. The dog is a lifesaver. That's all I can say." Behnke said this is the first time he's personally heard a story like this one happening in Cass County, but acknowledged that since hearing about it, other people have told him similar stories with different dogs. "If Bear wasn't out, I don't think Stanley would have made it," said Drauch. "He proved that he's got enough love for the kids he's more than just our hunting dog."
A town in Poland had only one cow and it stopped giving milk. The townspeople did a little research and discovered they could get a cow from Moscow for 2,000 rubles, or one from Minsk for only 1,000 rubles. So, naturally, they got the cow from Minsk. It was a great cow, with a wonderful disposition, and it gave lots of milk and cream. Everybody loved it dearly. So the people decided they would mate the cow and get more cows like it, so they would never have to worry about milk again. They brought a bull to the cow's pasture. But when the bull tried to mount the cow from the right, the cow moved to the left. And when the bull tried to mount the cow from the left, the cow moved to the right. This went on and on. Finally, in desperation, the people asked the Rabbi what to do.
"Rabbi, all day we've tried to mate our cow. But when the bull tried to mount the cow from the right, the cow moved to the left. And when the bull tried to mount the cow from the left, the cow moved to the right. What do we do?"
The Rabbi asked, "Did you buy this cow from Minsk?"
"Rabbi! You are so wise! How did you know we got the cow from Minsk?"
Sadly, the Rabbi said, "My wife is from Minsk...."
A US judge told the Utah mother of a 13-year-old girl who chopped off a toddler's long hair in a restaurant that he would reduce her daughter's sentence if she cut off the teenager's own ponytail in court. District Juvenile Judge Scott Johansen gave Valerie Bruno the option to either cut off her daughter Kaytlen Lopan's long hair "right now" with courtroom scissors or have the teen spend an extra 150 hours in detention as punishment for hacking off the locks of a three-year-old girl she befriended in a McDonald's in Price.
Bruno opted for the haircut but later expressed her anger over the judgment and said that she had filed an official complaint against the judge. "She definitely needed to be punished for what had happened," shesaidf. "But I never dreamt it would be that much of a punishment." Mindy Moss, the mother of the three-year-old girl, supported the decision and even was asked by the judge if she was satisfied with the length Bruno initially cut off her daughter's blonde hair in court.
"No," Moss replied. "My daughter's hair that had never been cut, that was down to [the middle of her back], was cut up to here [her jaw]." Johansen then ordered Bruno to "take it off clear up to the rubber band". On the day of the attack, Kaytlen and an unnamed 11-year-old female friend spoke to the girl in McDonald's, then asked a server there if they could borrow a pair of scissors. When their request was refused, the youngsters went to a nearby dollar shop to buy a pair and returned to the restaurant to carry out the act.
At an earlier hearing, Johansen ordered the 11-year-old girl to have her hair cut as short as his but allowed the child to have the haircut in a salon. Bruno added, "I guess I should have went into the courtroom knowing my rights because I felt very intimidated. An eye for an eye, that's not how you teach kids right from wrong." Kaytlen also admitted to charges in another case rising from eight months of phone calls she made to a Colorado teen that included threats of rape and mutilation.
An elderly woman's life was saved after she fell from a balcony on the 8th floor in Ukraine and her dress snagged on an awning on the 7th floor. The 74-year-old Mariupol resident fell after she leaned too far over the balcony while yelling at street musicians.
The lucky snag left her in a frightening and embarrassing predicament, with her underwear exposed as she hung from the fabric of her up-turned dress. When emergency services arrived at the scene they encountered problems that held up the rescue effort.
The rescuers struggled to get into the woman's home and eventually had to break down the door. While one team worked to get inside the woman's apartment a team of firefighters climbed up to reach her with a ladder on the back of a truck.
The woman was eventually pulled to safety by firefighters who cut her dress and lowered her through the window of an apartment on the floor below. Crowds gathered in the street below applauded and whistled as the woman's embarrassing ordeal came to an end. She was treated by paramedics at her home, who gave her a sedative before she sent them away.
I am a crack dealer in Columbus who has recently been diagnosed as a carrier of the HIV virus. My parents live in a suburb of Worthington and one of my sisters, who lives in Dublin, is married to a transvestite. My Father and Mother have recently been arrested for growing and selling marijuana and are currently dependent on my other two sisters, who are prostitutes in Grove City. I have two brothers. One is currently serving a non-parole life sentence in Lucasville for the murder of a teenage boy in 1994. The other brother is currently in jail awaiting trial on charges of sexual misconduct with his three children.
I have recently become engaged to marry a former Thai prostitute who lives in Atlanta and is still a part time "working girl" in a brothel.All things considered, my main problem is this. I love my fianc�e and look forward to bringing her into the family and I certainly want to be totally honest with her. Should I tell her that I'm voting for Mitt Romney?
An 8-year-old boy survived being swept into a Minnesota drain tunnel filled with rushing water and surfaced in a creek about a mile away. While he was under, it was his mother that was on his mind. "Mom, I thought I lost you," Kenny Markiewicz told his mother, Amber Markiewicz, when they were reunited, she said. "I did what you told me to do. I plugged my nose, I took a breath and I prayed." Less than an hour earlier, Markiewicz feared that she had lost her youngest child. The family had travelled from their Louisiana home to Proctor, Minn., to visit relatives. Proctor is a small town about eight miles southwest of Duluth, a city that has suffered record rainfall this week resulting in its worst floods since the 1970s.
On Wednesday afternoon, it was not raining and the street where the family was staying was not flooded. Kenny and his cousin went outside, walked a few houses down and approached what looked like a regular puddle. "I never ever let my child leave my sight. This was a split second," Markiewicz said. "He just was going across by the puddle and, apparently, there was a culvert or a pipe there and he fell in. We heard my niece scream that and we opened the door, ran down the hill and dialed 911." Markiewicz said that she couldn't see a manhole so she went into the water. "I'm feeling around and then I felt it," she said. "I could feel the rush of water." What she felt was a culvert - a pipe that allows water to flow underground. Because of the recent flooding, the drain was filled with surging water.
Ann Reyelts, a witness, said that frantic bystanders were moving boulders and lifting manholes in hopes of finding Kenny underground. "I just wanted to whip out my super powers and rip up the road," Reyelts said. Despite the efforts, 4-foot-3, 63-pound Kenny was nowhere to be seen and his mother was panicking. "I was frantic," Markiewicz said through tears. "I was going after my son, no matter what the cost. I would have given my life." While some people have told her the ordeal lasted about 20 minutes, she said, "To me, it felt like an eternity." Eventually, a policeman came and told her that a little boy named Kenny had been found and he said he wanted his mom. Markiewicz rushed to a police car to be driven to her son. "All I could think was, 'Oh my God, he came this far,'" she said of the drive.
About a mile away, Gordon Marshall had been at home when he heard a noise. "I heard this shrieking screaming, [it] kind of shakes me up because I got 10 grandkids," Marshall said. He went outside to check the creek behind his house and spotted a little boy "bleeding from the head down." "He was lost, petrified, scared to death," Marshall said. "The first thing I think I said to him is, 'Are you alright? Do you know where you're at?' He didn't. He just screamed." Marshall took the little boy into his house, called for help, bandaged his head and put a blanket around him until police came with his mother. "I just got out of the car and I ran. I just saw my child and my hero," Markiewicz said. "[Kenny] was worried about me. He just goes, 'I knew I had to find you,'" Markiewicz said, crying. She said the situation was an "unreal" miracle and she felt "overwhelmed, relieved, happy." In addition to the cut on the back of his head, Kenny had some bruises and abrasions but was going to be fine. His mother said that he remained a little shaken but joked that he's already getting tired of talking about the experience.
A Kansas City woman was charged Saturday with abusing her 10-year-old daughter who weighed just 32 pounds when she was found locked in a closet that reeked of urine.
The 29-year-old woman faces charges of assault and child abuse and endangerment in Jackson County Circuit Court. The Associated Press is not naming the mother to protect the child's identity. Prosecutors are requesting that bond be set at $200,000.
Officers freed the girl after responding Friday morning to a call to a child abuse hotline. Neighbors told police that they didn't know the malnourished child taken from the public housing complex even lived there.
When officers first arrived, two women told the officers that the mother had left about 20 minutes earlier with two girls, whom they described as "clean and well fed," a Kansas City officer said in the probable cause statement.
A social services worker said there should be three children at the home. But the women insisted, "No, we have lived here for several years, and she only has two daughters that stay here, and we have never seen the other girl, but we heard she stays with the father or an aunt," the probable cause statement said.
Officers ultimately made their way into the apartment, where they found a portable crib pushed up against a bedroom closet, which was tied closed. The officers asked if anyone was inside, and a child's voice answered "yes," the probable cause statement said.
The girl told officers that her mother took her sisters out to breakfast, but she didn't go because "she messes herself."
The girl was transported to a Children's Mercy Hospital, where she was diagnosed with multiple skin injuries. Hospital staff said she had gained just 6 pounds since she last was at the hospital six years earlier.
The girl told detectives who interviewed her at the hospital that her mother puts her in the closet "a lot," that she doesn't get to eat every day and that she "does not want to go back home anymore." The girl also said she gets in trouble "because she keeps peeing on herself" and her mother will "punch her on her back real hard," according to the probable cause statement.
The mother was arrested later Friday and the two younger children were placed in protective custody. The mother told police she doesn't let the 10-year-old leave the house because she knows the girl is malnourished and would "get in trouble if someone saw her."
The mother's boyfriend, who is not the girl's father and hasn't been charged, said he hadn't seen the girl in about a year. He said that when he asked about her, the mother told him she was with her aunt or in her room because she was in trouble. He said he never knew the mother put the girl in the closet or "he would have done something about it," the probable cause statement said.
One day a farmer's donkey fell down into a well. The animal cried piteously for hours as the farmer tried to figure out what to do.
Finally, he decided the animal was old, and the well needed to be covered up anyway it just wasn't worth it to retrieve the donkey.
He invited all his neighbors to come over and help him. They all grabbed a shovel and began to shovel dirt into the well. At first, the donkey realized what was happening and cried horribly. Then, to everyone's amazement he quieted down.
A few shovel loads later, the farmer finally looked down the well. He was astonished at what he saw. With each shovel of dirt that hit his back, the donkey was doing something amazing. He would shake it off and take a step up. As the farmer's neighbors continued to shovel
dirt on top of the animal, he would shake it off and take a step up. Pretty soon, everyone was amazed as the donkey stepped up over the edge of the well and happily trotted off!
Life is going to shovel dirt on you, all kinds of dirt. The trick to getting out of the well is to shake it off and take a step up. Each of our troubles is stepping stone. We can get out of the deepest wells just by not stopping,never giving up! Shake it off and take a step up.
Remember the five simple rules to be happy:Free your heart from hatred - Forgive. Free your mind from worries - Most never happen. Live simply and appreciate what you have.
Give more. Expect less NOW....
Enough of that crap. . The donkey later came back, and bit the farmer who had tried to bury him. The gash from the bite got infected and the farmer eventually died in agony from septic shock.
MORAL FROM TODAY'S LESSON: When you do something wrong, and try to cover your ass, it always comes back to bite you.
Chicago-area parents thought their pit bull was to blame when they heard their 18-month-old daughter crying and discovered one of her fingertips had been severed.
Turns out, the culprit was a piranha the family kept in an aquarium.
Doctors determined the bite wasn't from a dog after the girl was rushed to a hospital by ambulance Tuesday night.
Cook County Sheriff's Department spokesman Frank Bilecki tells the Chicago Tribune (http://trib.in/NldQUB ) the girl's father cut open one of two piranhas and found the fingertip. He says doctors tried to reattach the fingertip, but he didn't know if they were successful.
He didn't immediately respond to messages left Saturday by The Associated Press, and a hospital spokesman couldn't provide the information.
Bilecki says the parents were distraught and aren't facing charges.
One morning a Scotsman is having breakfast in Paris, (coffee, croissants, bread, butter and marmalade) when a Frenchman, chewing bubble-gum, sits down next to him. The Scotsman ignores the Frenchman who, nevertheless, starts a conversation.
Frenchman: 'You Scots folk eat the whole bread?'
Scotsman (in a bad mood): 'Of course.'
Frenchman (after blowing a huge bubble): 'We don't. In France, we only eat what's inside. The crusts we collect in a container, recycle it, transform them into croissants and sell them to Scotland.' The Frenchman has a smirk on his face.
The Scotsman listens in silence..
The Frenchman persists: 'Do you eat marmalade with your bread?'
Scotsman: 'Of course.'
Frenchman (cracking his bubble-gum between his teeth and chuckling): 'We don't. In France we eat fresh fruit for breakfast, then we put all the peels, seeds, and leftovers in containers, recycle them, transform them into marmalade, and sell the marmalade to Scotland.'
After a moment of silence, the Scotsman asks: 'Do you have sex in France?'
Frenchman: 'Why of course we do', he says with a big smirk.
Scotsman: 'And what do you do with the condoms once you've used them?'
Frenchman: 'We throw them away, of course.'
Scotsman: 'We don't. In Scotland, we put them in a container, recycle them, melt them down into bubble-gum, and sell them to France..'
The Reverend John Fuzz was pastor of a small congregation in a little Pennsylvania town. One day he was walking down Main Street and he happened to notice a female member of his congregation sitting in the town bar, drinking beer. The reverend thought this was sinful and not something a member of his congregation should do, so he walked through the open door of the bar and sat down next to the woman.
"Mrs. Fitzgerald," the reverend said sternly. "This is no place for a member of my congregation. Why don't you let me take you home?"
"Sure," she said with a slur, obviously very drunk.
When Mrs. Fitzgerald stood up from the bar, she began to weave back and forth. The reverend realized that she had had to much to drink and he grabbed hold of her arms to steady her. When he did, they both lost their balance and tumbled to the floor.
After rolling around for a few seconds, the reverend wound up lying on top of Mrs. Fitzgerald, her skirt hiked up to her waist. The bartender looked over the bar and said, "Here, here, buddy, we won't have any of that carrying on in this bar!"
The reverend looked up at the bartender and said, "But you don't understand, I'm Pastor Fuzz."
The bartender nodded, "Hell then, if you're that far in, you might as well finish up."
A panic-stricken golfer called the clubhouse from his cell phone. "Help! I hit a terrible slice off the seventh tee. My ball went out of bounds and hit a man riding a motorcycle who lost control and swerved into the path of a truck. The truck jackknifed and rolled over, spilling a load of beehives, releasing millions of bees. They're stinging everyone on the course! It's awful! What should I do?"
The pro answered, "Well, first, keep your arms straight and get your right hand more under the club..."
Sam and Abe, each in his eighties, had been friends since grade school. Now all they do is play cards, tell jokes and make bets. One day, Sam said to Abe, "I'll bet you that mine is longer soft than yours is hard. How about a thousand dollars?"
Abe replied, "How can that be? If you know anything about biology, you know...."
Sam interrupted. "Look, it's a bet, not a lecture. Yes or no? Mine is longer soft than yours is hard. A thousand bucks?"
Abe said, "Okay, okay. I'll take the bet. How long is yours soft?"
In the fairy tale, Sleeping Beauty is a princess sent into a 100-year slumber by an evil witch. A kiss from a handsome prince breaks the spell, and they live happily ever after.
The present-day "Sleeping Beauty," as the media calls her, is a 17-year-old woman in Worthing, England, named Louisa Ball. Instead of the fairy tale's poisoned splinter, her curse began with flu-like symptoms two years ago.
"Bad cold, temperature ... and from then on that's when I started to sleep," she said.
She wouldn't stop for 10 to 14 days.
Her parents would rouse her for bathroom breaks and ravenous feedings.
"She'd go through a whole packet of biscuits, or ... five or six packets of crisps -- anything that she could get her hands on," said her father, Rick Ball. "It was a case of almost like a hamster hibernating, and the food would get stuffed in. And you'd have to step in and say, 'Whoa, that's enough.'"
Her mother, Lottie Ball, added, "I asked to see a dietician ... because I was concerned when Louisa was in an episode that, you know, she is missing out on all the goodness."
The advice she got was to give Louisa smoothies, which gave her food and fluid at the same time.
Even so, Louisa would lose as much as 10 pounds during a sleep episode. Even odder than her eating habits was her behavior, which featured offensive, almost primal, mood swings.
"They're horrible. They're scary, it's like a different child," said Lottie Ball.
The parents knew a sleep episode was coming when their otherwise sweet-natured daughter would snap at others inappropriately.
"When she's up and she's confrontational, those were the scarier moments," Rick Ball said.
The year before college, Louisa slept for a solid week every month. She missed weeks of school and fell behind in her beloved dance classes.
"I missed my end-of-school exams, obviously, because I was in an episode," she said. "I've missed, like, family holidays, birthdays and parties."
The doctors were as baffled as Louisa's parents.
"To see all the various medical professionals and not get any answers ... it was pretty frustrating," said Rick Ball. "Everything goes through your mind, and you wonder whether or not she has taken a drug."
Then came a breakthrough, courtesy of a consultant in London to whom the family was referred.
"I always refer to it as the 'Champagne and hangover' moment," said Rick Ball, "because we went in there and the good news was, 'I think I know what's wrong with your daughter.' And the bad news was, 'There's no cure.'"
Louisa was diagnosed with Kleine-Levin Syndrome, an incurable autoimmune disorder that some researchers say disrupts the hypothalamus, the part of the brain that regulates appetite, sleep and libido.
KLS more often afflicts males, usually beginning with a virus during adolescence that seems to trigger the sleep and aggressiveness, along with hyper sexuality.
Mood stabilizers like lithium and hormone therapies help those with KLS around the edges, but they don't ward off the extreme sleep.
"[When I wake up] I'm always confused as to what day it is, because I don't know how long I've slept for," Louisa said. "And then when I realize, I'm like, 'Wow, that's a long time!'"
How does she feel when she wakes up?
"Refreshed," she said.
Her sleep episodes have become less frequent. She recently went five months without one. According to experts, KLS sufferers can grow out of it after 10 to 12 years.
As Louisa's story grew in the media, headlines called her "Sleeping Beauty," and KLS is known as Sleeping Beauty syndrome.
If someone cast a spell on Louisa, there must be a handsome prince coming in some form. Romantically speaking, she said there was no prince in her life, at the moment.
The prince could take the form of a cure, and Louisa's family contributes to the KSL Foundation in California to help speed his arrival.
In either case, Lottie Ball said, "We're waiting for the handsome prince."
* Lecture: An art of transferring information from the notes of the Lecturer to the notes of the students without passing through" the minds of either."
* Conference: The confusion of one man multiplied by the number present.
* Compromise: The art of dividing a cake in such a way that everybody believes he got the biggest piece.
* Tears: The hydraulic force by which masculine will-power is defeated by feminine water power.
* Dictionary: A place where success comes before work.
* Conference Room: A place where everybody talks, nobody listens and everybody disagrees later on.
* Classic: A book which people praise, but do not read.
* Smile: A curve that can set a lot of things straight.
* Office: A place where you can relax after your strenuous home life.
* Yawn: The only time some married men ever get to open their mouth.
Catnip drive felines crazy, causing them to roll around on the floor and paw at invisible birds flying in their vicinity, but why?
Humans have used catnip for recreational purposes, as smoking the substance produces some interesting effects. How does catnip affect felines and why does it cause such wild responses? Are cat owners willfully doping their pets?
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Catnip is another name for the herb Nepeta cataria, a relative of oregano and spearmint. Nepeta cataria is a pretty common plant, often found along highways and railroads in North America. Don't feed your cat any Nepeta cataria you might find along the side of the road, as it could contain an array of pesticides or harmful chemicals left over from railway construction like creosote.
The active molecule in Nepeta cataria is nepetalactone, which is believed to mimic a cat pheromone. Nepetalactone binds to a cat's olfactory receptors to produce catnip's unique response.
Owner's descriptions of the effects of catnip on their pets range from arousal to euphoria to sedation, with some cats drooling during exposure. One veterinarian suggested that the moans cats make while exposed to catnip are the result of chemically induced hallucinations. If a human exhibited these signs, we would likely be concerned, but most cat owners are comfortable with their feline's recreational drug problem.
Leaves from Nepeta cataria or nepetalactone oil extracts are used by cat owners to provoke their pets. Owners can crush Nepeta cataria to release the attractant that lies within bulbs of the herb or they can buy toys infused with an extract of the herb. Since the pheromone mimic affects the olfactory receptors, cats don't achieve any positive results from eating catnip. Consumption of the buds sends the active ingredient down the digestive tract, where it is degraded. A little less than half of cats are not attracted to catnip at all, with genetics playing a role in determining a cat's interest in the herb. Catnip, in large enough quantities, will also work as an attractant for large cats like lions and tigers.
Europeans in the 1400s regularly drank teas made from catnip, with the herb earning a medicinal application for treatment of colic and flatulence. Nepeta cataria is a member of the mint family, with tea brewed that possesses a flavor and smell similar to mint tea.
Smoking catnip became popular as an alternative to marijuana in the 1960s. When the herb is smoked, it produces a low level, legal high complete with audio/visual hallucinations and a relaxed feeling at a fraction of the cost. Concentrated doses of Nepeta cataria brewed as a tea can also produce a mild, short-term sedative effect in humans.
While catnip serves no real purpose other than allowing an owner to watch his or her cat go bonkers, there is no evidence that causes harms to cats either. If your pet is a little too sedate, toss it some catnip and liven things up.
Solo the Border Collie grew up with Siberian tigers at The Seaview Lion Park in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. With no sheep to round up, the dog started herding tigers, hyenas and jackals instead.
When train driver Guo Zuchun saw a family of baby owls perching on the tracks ahead of him, he could hardly believe his eyes. "They were so small I almost didn't see them," said Gho, who was taking power station workers to their plant in Chongqing city in southern China.
"But I slammed on the brakes and when we went to look there were three baby owls hopping around on the rails." Wildlife experts believe the little owl chicks' nest had been destroyed in a storm leaving the youngsters, then still too small to fly, stranded.
Two were given to a local wildlife centre to be raised, but Guo was allowed to keep one as a pet. Now the young owl thinks his new life is a hoot, says Gou.
"I take him to work every day and he sits on the dashboard in front of me having a good look at what's going on around us," he said. "He seems to like riding the train more than he likes flying," laughed Gou.
The Secretary came in late for work the third day in a row. The boss called her into his office and said, "Now look Sharon, I know we had a wild fling for awhile, but that's over. I expect you to conduct yourself like any other employee around here. Who told you you could come and go as you please around here?"
Sharon simply smiled, lit up a cigarette, and while exhaling said, "My lawyer."
An unlicensed Montana teen was going 100 miles per hour when he reportedly hit a moose in Idaho's Silver Valley yesterday. To make matters worse, his whole family was in the car with him: two five-year-olds and three adults with suspended licenses who were all riding in the backseat.
It gets worse.
The whole thing was utterly ridiculous, the kind of stuff you can't make up. The moose was decapitated, and when its head came off, it flew into the car and head-butted one of the five-year-olds. The child suffered a fractured skull and had to have a plate put in at the hospital.
Not disgusted enough? The driver's guardian is on parole and wasn't supposed to leave the state. The Cadillac, which was pretty much destroyed in the crash, wasn't insured, so paying for the all of the medical and legal fees will most likely be challenging. Ryan Comesatnight, the car's 14-year-old driver, faces charges for driving without a license. The rest seems to be punishment enough.
The group had made it nearly 300 miles from Great Falls, Mont. when the crash happened. They were almost at their destination: the Coeur d'Alene Casino. What a disaster.
An old man just had a heart transplant and was getting instructions from his doctor. He was placed on a strict diet, denied tobacco and alcohol,and advised to get at least eight hours sleep a night.
"What about my sex life?" asked the old man "Will it be all right for me to have intercourse? "
"Only with your wife," said the doctor. "We don't want you to get too excited."
A woman meets a handsome man in a bar. They talk, they connect they end up leaving together. They get back to his place, and as he shows her around his apartment, she notices that his bedroom is completely packed with sweet cuddly Teddy bears.
Hundreds of cute small bears on a shelf all the way along the floor,cuddly medium-sized ones on a shelf a little higher, and huge enormous bears on the top shelf along the wall.
The woman is kind of surprised that this guy would have a collection of teddy bears, especially one that's so extensive, but she decides not to mention this to him, and is quite impressed by his sensitive side.
She turns to him... they kiss...and then they rip each other's clothes off and make hot steamy love. After an intense night of passion with this sensitive guy, they are lying there together in the afterglow, the woman rolls over and asks, smiling, "Well, how was it?"
The man says, "You can pick any prize from the top shelf"
