RIPPED FROM TODAY's HEADLINES:
From CNN:
The two cases were revealed after it emerged that the Cumbrian slaughterman may have become infected when a rotting carcass he was carrying exploded in his face.
UK Prime Minister Tony Blair said on Tuesday that it had yet to be confirmed whether the slaughterman had contracted the disease.
Blair's spokesman said: "My understanding is that (the slaughterman) was moving the decomposing carcass of a cow, when that carcass exploded, and the fluid went into his mouth.
"I only say this just to illustrate that should this be confirmed, how unusual are the circumstances regarding this individual possibly contracting foot-and-mouth.
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Reading it now, in flat ASCII text I guess this might not seem too funny. However, I laughed so hard this morning when I read it that my coworkers became concerned. Then I had to explain what I was laughing about, and they became very concerned and left. Once, working at summer camp I was in a canoe with two of the kids when a dead dog floated downriver towards us. It was a big black dog, bloated with gas, almost cartoonishly inflated, legs poking out to the side.
"Is that dog dead?" the kid asked.
"It sure looks that way. He must have fallen in and drowned." I replied
"Why is he puffed up like that?"
"Well, when an animal or person dies, the bacteria that live in the body start working overtime. The bacteria produce gas, and that inflates the corpse, like with the dog."
"Can we go closer to it? Look at it closer?" What the hell? Why not. I paddled us over till we were right alongside the dog. A stick floated between us and the dog. Moving with only the deliberation and speed that a 9 year old child can muster Kid #1 jammed the stick into the dog's turgid belly.
Before I could say "NO!" it was too late. The dog splattered open like a water balloon, whirling tendrils of white gas snaking up out of the exposed abdominal cavity. Viscera and multicolored meat shrapnel showered the canoe and us along with it. The kids began screaming, the canoe tipping. I had a shred of intestine flapped across my face, too shocked to be horrified. I grabbed the gunwales to keep us from capsizing, as we had literally been attacked by water moccasins in the past.
And then I started to laugh, and the kids looked back at me in the stern of the boat and they started to laugh. We beached the canoe on a sandbar, and I rubbed them down with sand and water. Nobody was the worst for wear. No psychological trauma, no fevers of unknown origin. I still laugh when I think about it.
Can you imagine how fucking big a mess an exploding cow would make? I would love to see that.