Blazer
08-16-2004, 11:10 AM
These are from the Fortean Times Book of Exploding Pigs compiled by Ian Simmons who claims they are all true stories.
Animals & Technology:
The internet worm is a virus-like program which causes widespread havoc, but it was a worm of a different sort that crashed Susie Garner’s computer. Miss Garner, a public relations assistant at Keele University, was baffled by her computer’s random shut-down – until, that is, she looked inside. Wedged inside her hard drive was a live earthworm. Every time it wriggled, the system crashed.
A pensioner called out engineers as the phone regularly failed to ring when friends called, and when it did her dog always barked first. A technician climbed the phone pole, connected his test rig and dialled the house – no ring. He tried again, the dog barked loudly – the phone rang.
British phones signal an incoming call with a 90-volt current sent between two circuits and the ground, triggering the bell.
On investigation the technician found the dog was usually tied to the system’s ground post, through which the current flowed, with an iron chain and collar. When a call came in the dog got a series of 90-volt shocks, eventually causing it to urinate and bark. The stream of urine would earth the charge and the phone would ring.
Wires caused problems at Chester Zoo too. For months the zoo was plagued by phones which rang for no reason, but the mystery was solved when a keeper saw George the Giraffe reach up and wrap his tongue around the phone cable over his enclosure. The phones immediately began ringing, only stopping when George let go – his tongue had shorted the system, setting the bells off. The zoo raised the cables by three feet, putting them out of George’s reach.
Dogs Will Eat Anything:
Dempsey the Doberman had to be rushed to the vet to have his jaws separated after enthusiastically scoffing a tube of superglue in Bournemouth, Dorset.
Pets are supposed to have a calming influence on their owners, but this was not the case for Jean Glover of Auckland, New Zealand, who took pills to control her heart palpitations – her Rottweiler Roxanne’s behaviour was enough to give anyone palpitations. When Mrs Glover took Roxanne for a walk in her local park the dog found an unexploded hand-grenade and started playing with it. “She was rolling on her back, dropping it and picking it up, coming to me and pretending to give it to me and then running off again,” she said. The more she tried to persuade Roxanne to give up the grenade, the more the dog thought it was a game. Finally Mrs Glover separated the dog from the bomb: “I wasn’t going to touch it, and when I got her to drop it I put her back on her chain and called the police.” The live grenade was later packed in sand and blown up by the army, but no one could explain how it ended up in the park.
In New York, Apple, a nine-month-old border collie, took advantage Eric Fuch’s absence playing bridge to scoff a large chunk of devil’s food cake – and swallowed the foot-long knife he’d left in it as well. The daft dog was rushed to an animal hospital where X-rays revealed the knife in her belly. “Pulling the knife out was the scary thing,” said surgeon Elaine Caplan. “It was just amazing the knife didn’t slice through the oesophagus.” It took two hours to remove the implement, repair internal damage and stitch up the 13-inch cut. Caplan said the dog survived because she swallowed the knife’s four-inch handle first instead of the eight-inch blade.
In New York Flame the Dalmatian developed breathing trouble which persisted for a month, so his owner took him to the vet, where he was given an X-ray. This revealed the cause of the problem – a Bic pen which the dog had somehow snorted and which had become jammed up his nose. The vet yanked the writing implement out with forceps. It was still working.
Animals & Technology:
The internet worm is a virus-like program which causes widespread havoc, but it was a worm of a different sort that crashed Susie Garner’s computer. Miss Garner, a public relations assistant at Keele University, was baffled by her computer’s random shut-down – until, that is, she looked inside. Wedged inside her hard drive was a live earthworm. Every time it wriggled, the system crashed.
A pensioner called out engineers as the phone regularly failed to ring when friends called, and when it did her dog always barked first. A technician climbed the phone pole, connected his test rig and dialled the house – no ring. He tried again, the dog barked loudly – the phone rang.
British phones signal an incoming call with a 90-volt current sent between two circuits and the ground, triggering the bell.
On investigation the technician found the dog was usually tied to the system’s ground post, through which the current flowed, with an iron chain and collar. When a call came in the dog got a series of 90-volt shocks, eventually causing it to urinate and bark. The stream of urine would earth the charge and the phone would ring.
Wires caused problems at Chester Zoo too. For months the zoo was plagued by phones which rang for no reason, but the mystery was solved when a keeper saw George the Giraffe reach up and wrap his tongue around the phone cable over his enclosure. The phones immediately began ringing, only stopping when George let go – his tongue had shorted the system, setting the bells off. The zoo raised the cables by three feet, putting them out of George’s reach.
Dogs Will Eat Anything:
Dempsey the Doberman had to be rushed to the vet to have his jaws separated after enthusiastically scoffing a tube of superglue in Bournemouth, Dorset.
Pets are supposed to have a calming influence on their owners, but this was not the case for Jean Glover of Auckland, New Zealand, who took pills to control her heart palpitations – her Rottweiler Roxanne’s behaviour was enough to give anyone palpitations. When Mrs Glover took Roxanne for a walk in her local park the dog found an unexploded hand-grenade and started playing with it. “She was rolling on her back, dropping it and picking it up, coming to me and pretending to give it to me and then running off again,” she said. The more she tried to persuade Roxanne to give up the grenade, the more the dog thought it was a game. Finally Mrs Glover separated the dog from the bomb: “I wasn’t going to touch it, and when I got her to drop it I put her back on her chain and called the police.” The live grenade was later packed in sand and blown up by the army, but no one could explain how it ended up in the park.
In New York, Apple, a nine-month-old border collie, took advantage Eric Fuch’s absence playing bridge to scoff a large chunk of devil’s food cake – and swallowed the foot-long knife he’d left in it as well. The daft dog was rushed to an animal hospital where X-rays revealed the knife in her belly. “Pulling the knife out was the scary thing,” said surgeon Elaine Caplan. “It was just amazing the knife didn’t slice through the oesophagus.” It took two hours to remove the implement, repair internal damage and stitch up the 13-inch cut. Caplan said the dog survived because she swallowed the knife’s four-inch handle first instead of the eight-inch blade.
In New York Flame the Dalmatian developed breathing trouble which persisted for a month, so his owner took him to the vet, where he was given an X-ray. This revealed the cause of the problem – a Bic pen which the dog had somehow snorted and which had become jammed up his nose. The vet yanked the writing implement out with forceps. It was still working.