Welcome to this week's Weird Wednesday. I've just discovered that there's a meme called Weird Wednesday. If anyone's wondering - my Weird Wednesday feature is not part of that meme.
For today's first item, I'd like to return to last week's theme of weird food. If you thought it was just foreigners who eat disgusting things, think again. It seems we Brits, as well as our American cousins, have an appetite for squirrel. The Famous Wild Boar hotel at Crook, near Windermere, in Cumbria is offering free grey squirrel pancakes to diners at its restaurant. The squirrels, captured in the hotel's vast, wooded grounds, are prepared in a Peking duck style. Andy Lemm, the hotel's general manager, told the Daily Mail that the hotel's diners "seemed to enjoy the squirrel pancakes and I thought they tasted rather nice, a bit like rabbit."
Lord Redesdale established the Red Squirrel Protection Partnership, which specialises in trapping and removing non-native American grey squirrels, to protect our native red squirrels. He has said he would like to supply grey squirrels for use as food. Support for this idea comes from a number of individuals, including Carri Nicholson, the manager of the Save Our Squirrels project, which is based at the Northumberland Wildlife Trust. She told the Daily Mail: "It is far more ecologically and environmentally sound to find a use for what is being trapped. A number of places in Northumberland are thinking of having grey squirrel on the menu. I haven't tried grey squirrel but people I know who have say it tastes like chicken used to taste when it tasted like chicken. The Americans have numerous recipes for grey squirrel, with the most popular being Brunswick Stew, which is casseroled squirrel."
Grey squirrels may look cute, but they're a menace in the UK, stealing the food and habitats of native reds, and in some instances, attacking and killing the smaller reds. Native reds are now threatened with extinction thanks to these voracious invaders. Squirrel stew, anyone?
From squirrels, we leap to a hot UFO story, UFO in this instance being short for unidentified falling object. Susan Wilson, of Stanton, Delaware, parked her SUV outside a shop on Monday afternoon. When she returned a few minutes later, she was startled to discover that something had sliced through the roof of her vehicle “like butter”. The 16 inch, hook-shaped, brown metal object was still smouldering when she discovered it, on the floor of the rear passenger area. The interior of the vehicle was also littered with ash and debris. A witness said the object descended with an explosive boom. Delaware State Police spokesman Cpl. Jeff Whitmarsh said: “The metal was still too hot to handle,” when emergency services arrived at the scene. As soon as it cooled down, officials passed it to Federal Aviation Administration personnel.
Although some further analysis is yet to be performed, the FAA is confident that the mystery object had not come from any aircraft. Sadly for Ms. Wilson and her fiance, because no-one knows the source of the mystery object, her insurers have said she must pay for the damage herself. Have aliens taken to throwing hot, smoking hooks at us? Or is this yet another example of the squirrel menace?
Finally, on today's Weird Wednesday, spare a thought for this unfortunate Indian housewife. Doctors recently removed a three inch portion of a toothbrush from her nose. Unsure of exactly how the brush got lodged in her nose, she arrived at a Mumbai hospital in severe pain. According to the Mumbai Mirror doctors were shocked when a CT scan revealed the broken toothbrush. The unnamed 31-year-old patient said: "I was brushing my teeth, my husband accidentally pushed me and the toothbrush in my hand broke. I was left holding the lower portion of the brush but couldn't locate the rest of it. Soon after, I started bleeding profusely from the nose. But since that day, I began getting breathless and a foul-smelling discharge began to come out of my nose. I used to get restless gasping for breath sometimes."
The surgery was carried out by Dr Kaushal Sheth, who said: "The odour from her nose was so bad that it could be smelt from a distance of two feet. If the object had fallen into her windpipe, she could have choked to death."
That's it for today's Weird Wednesday. More weirdness next week.
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