Mandrake and Womandrake

A man named Fan spotted a perfect, anatomically correct, couple crafted from the root of a Chinese fleeceflower. He bought the anthropomorphic tuber in a vegetable stall in China’s eastern Shandong province, paying 600 yuan (about $20).

Now I don’t know about you, but this sounds like the mythical mandrake root. This legendary vegetable borders on the animal kingdom. It will shriek when removed from the ground, driving the listeners mad. It sprouts where the semen of a hanged man drips to the earth. I’m not quite sure why it’s a hanged man and not a man beheaded or dispatched any other way. Perhaps the length of time the body rots has something to do with it. Also, perhaps I’m over thinking this, but aren’t most men hanged clothed? I mean, how will the semen dribble to the ground? Along the pant leg? Assuming a decent amount of absorption from the fabric, that would be a monumental amount of semen.

The actual root looks rather benign, not as striking as what the Chinese shopper picked up. Of course it’s used in all sorts of magic rituals. The word mandrake means “love fruit” in Hebrew. There are supposedly male and female versions. The male is white and the female is black.

Another fruit gained the name “love apple”, though this boasts no anthropomorphic features whatsoever. The tomato, staple of Italian pizzerias the world over, was mistakenly lumped into the nightshade family alongside the mandrake. It seems the wise Renaissance botanists thought the tomato, which arrived from the New World, was poisonous. It was primarily used as decoration because heaven forbid you actually taste one. Those savages from the Americas had no idea what they were doing.

Interestingly the Italian name for tomato is pomo d’oro, or golden apple because the first to reach Europe was the yellow variety. Again, this sparks my memory of the Golden Apple and Paris’ rather daunting dilemma. Perhaps the yellow color reminded Italians of upsetting the gods, or at least the goddesses. This would jive with the aspect of love. Paris’ love, or at least serious infatuation, with Helen led him to kidnap the Spartan princess. Now that I think of it, you can’t blame the Italians for not taking a bite.

However you can eat the root of the Chinese fleeceflower, no matter how odd it looks. It’s boiled and used to reduce cholesterol and fight heart disease. Fan won’t be setting tuber to pot anytime soon. People have come from miles around to see his foot-long pornographic plant.

Information on Fan’s fantastic discovery comes from the Daily Mail (January 26, 2008). Other information derived from Wikipedia.

Tim Kane

Will bugs eat you if you’re not actually dead?

Here’s the situation: You’re out hiking in mountains alone. You slip and fall off a moderate cliff and break your back. You’re not dead, but you can’t move either. Your cell phone and flare gun are useless because all your limbs are paralyzed. Will the bugs that consume dead bodies try and consume you?

I’ll give you the good news first. Many of the bugs that live on dead flesh are attracted to organic decay itself. The beetles that do the bulk of the eating sense dead animals in a way that is still poorly understood. They are not likely to drool over a live human, immobilized or not. Other bugs, generally referred to as “cheese-skippers” prefer the more advanced stages of decay, after your own digestive juices have gone work on you. The bottom line? If you aren’t stinky rotten, some bugs just aren’t interested.

Now for the bad news. Flies don’t care if you’re dead or not. Neither do ants. Flies will settle and lay eggs on any unmoving animal within twenty minutes. (There’s a pizza delivery joke in there somewhere, but I’ll resist.) Their favorite place to lay eggs? Open wounds. This isn’t as bad as it sounds, actually. Maggots eat necrotic flesh, and a good maggot infestation can actually save you from septicemia and gangrene. Just don’t get them in your eyes. Not all ants will eat flesh, but those that will don’t care if you’re dead or not. Hell, ants don’t care if you wiggle or not, so long as you can’t get away.

This sort of thing happens more often than you might think. Not just to hikers, but to botched suicides and the victims of amateurish murder attempts. But the most frequent subjects of unwanted insect infestation are the elderly and the ill. The most likely causes? Abuse and neglect.

So never hike alone, boys and girls. And choose Granny’s nursing home carefully.

Note: Many off the facts in this entry come from a lecture by David Faulkner, Forensic Entomologist. Any errors are my own.

David Hurwitz

Circle of Sheep and Giant Spider Webs

We all know the stories about sheep and sheep herders. At least I have. Something about greasing up the mutton chop and pushing it over a fence (wink wink).

What I’ve never seen is a circle of sheep. Apparently it does happen. On January 25, one Russell Bird snapped this photo of 100 sheep in a near perfect circle in Hertfordshire, England. The circle lasted ten minutes, ending when a farmer drove a tractor into the field. Perhaps they were following the leader, who in turn followed the end of the line.

This is a real spider web in Texas. No, William Shatner will not save you from this one. If you haven’t seen Kingdom of the Spiders I urge you to. The movie is awful, but watchable. You have Shatner’s acting (or over acting) and the scene where he changes the fuse is especially good. Also the opening scene showcases the best actor in the film: the cow. There are three reaction shots where the cow “senses” the spiders coming to attack her. Astounding.

Anyway, the spiders in Texas have been busy. In late August, 2007, heavy summer rains created perfect feeding conditions for spiders. Typically these critters consume their rivals, so they’re not much on cooperation. In this case the food supply was abundant — an all-you-can-eat buffet if you will. The spiders worked collectively to spin a web that covered 600 ft along the trail at Lake Tawakoni State Park (about 45 miles east of Dallas). This super-web started out a pristine white, but soon was covered in so many wriggling mosquitoes that it turned brown. Park superintendent, Donna Garde, said, “…you can literally hear the screech of millions of mosquitoes caught in that web.”

Tim Kane

What does it feel like when your heart stops?

Writers need to know a lot of weird shit. When you write horror, the shit you need to know is just naturally a bit weirder. So, in the spirit of mutual assistance, I offer the answer to the above question to my fellow horror hacks.

I know what you’re thinking. That’s nice, Dave, but how do know what it feels like when your heart stops? Isn’t that usually, like, fatal?

In point of fact, I have had my heart stopped several times, all for medical purposes and all under supervised conditions. I’ve actually lost count of the specific number of times. Most of these little vacations for my circulatory system took place during heart surgery, with machines picking up the slack. Obviously, I was unconscious for those.

I even had my heart stopped with the paddles once. At one time, I suffered from rapid heart arrhythmia. Stopping the heart and starting it again can trick it into beating normally, not unlike rebooting your computer. Sadly, I don’t remember what the shock itself feels like. The ER docs slipped me something which permanently erased about five minutes from my brain. I still remember how sore I felt afterward, like I’d been kicked and beaten, but without the bruising. If I’d had any gambling debts, I would have paid them.

The incident I have in mind occurred around the same time and for the same reasons. Instead of the paddles, which are actually fairly dangerous for someone with my surgical history, the ER docs used drugs this time.

My first sensation was actually one of profound relief. Rapid heart arrhythmia feels terrible, like your body is running at top speed for hours on end, even when you’re sitting, even while you sleep. Now the runner stopped, sat down on the ground, and took a few deep breaths. The rest was wonderful. I tried to take a few deep breaths myself. That was much more difficult than it should have been.

I don’t know if you are aware of your own heartbeat, but several weeks of rhythm trouble had taught me to be alert for changes. I waited, breathing shallowly, for the familiar pulse to start again. Nothing happened. The hollow silence in my chest went on and on. The world began to change.

My peripheral vision dimmed down to a hazy black tunnel as the blood left my head. The space immediately before me became a hot blur. A vast rushing sound filled my ears, like a high wind, like a subway train approaching at a furious speed, pushing the air before it.

“Try to breath normally,” the doctor said, and it sounded as though he was shouting at the bottom of a pool. I found myself shaking, hyperventilating, seriously panicked. The black at the edges of my vision spread inward, and I lost all sensation of my body.

Then my heart beat once. Then nothing. Again. Then nothing. Two beats, three beats, four, irregularly spaced and without pattern. Then it was like an engine caught.

My sight returned, washing back in pixilated smudges. When my vision cleared completely, I saw that the doctor was holding the defibrillator paddles. His face had gone white. My wife, who was present through all of this, claims that I laughed and muttered “Tunnel of light.”

From a treatment standpoint, the whole ordeal was a bust. My heart beat just as fast as before, once it restarted. Still, it’s given me plenty to think about over the years. Looking back, the weirdest part of the experience by far was the minute or so I sat there feeling fine and dandy. Death, in and of itself, didn’t really seem to hurt much. I can also see why many people give a religious significance to the physiological sensations of dying. Tunnel of light, indeed.

David Hurwitz