When you see Mothman hanging out near a bridge, WATCH OUT!
Grainy amateur footage of a cryptid captured drinking an iced latte in the forest
Today I learned a fact that kinda blew my mind, and I'm almost astonished I didn't know this before as someone whose chief interests include zoo animals, the U.S. Presidency, true crime, and D.C. history. What an opener, right? How could those topics possibly combine?
Well, buckle up and get ready to hear how negligent National Zoo leadership potentially could have killed a US President or started a local epidemic. Spoiler alert: They didn't. But only because luck was in their favor.
First, the part that I DID already know. In 2004, Lucy Spelman stepped down as the director of the National Zoo after a spate of controversial zoo incidents, including a string of unfortunate (and often preventable) animal deaths, misleading and missing zoo records, and other signs of negligence. The AZA even "tabled" renewing the National Zoo's accreditation for a year until they made some significant improvements. Spelman was also a vet and some of the cases she was accused of bungling happened at her own hands, not just under her supervision. It was a major disgrace for a zoo that was meant to represent the nation's capital.
I was in elementary school during these fraught years and I remember devouring articles about this in the newspaper, riveted with shock and dismay. Some of the deaths were just bad luck, but others were obviously negligent. The most infamous case was two red pandas killed by rat poison shallowly buried in their enclosures as a slapdash solution to the zoo's pest problem. A young zebra died of starvation and hypothermia after Spelman ordered the zebras' feed be cut in half, an orangutan was euthanized due to a recurrence of cancer that didn't exist (she actually had salmonella), a lion died after being administered over twice the usual amount of anesthetic, and more. I remember the names and details of these animals from when I first read these cases 20 years ago. But the one I'm talking about today is that of Nancy the elephant.
Nancy was a 46-year-old African elephant whose health had been steadily declining for several years. She suffered from a bone infection in her foot that seriously affected her mobility and quality of life. She had lost a lot of weight, she was fatigued, she even lay down at times. Nobody could be blamed for deciding to euthanize the obviously ill animal.
But they could be blamed for what was discovered in the necropsy after she was euthanized. While she did indeed have a diseased foot, the bone infection was only "moderate." Why, then, was she so obviously unwell? Her lungs had been destroyed by the effects of untreated tuberculosis. It was the tuberculosis, not the sore foot, that most contributed to her decline in health.
Here’s the scary part: nobody knows how long she'd had it because she hadn't been tested for tuberculosis, a known concern for zoo elephants, in TWO YEARS. All this despite the fact that it's MANDATORY for all zoo elephants to receive a tuberculosis test once per year-- and in fact, it was a National Zoo staff member who pushed for that reform in the first place. And the elephant was on Prednisone for her foot issues, which zoo staff noted in her records made her more vulnerable to illnesses like TB. In fact, none of the zoo's elephants had been tested recently, which meant any of them, including one who was pregnant, may have had tuberculosis, too.
There are documented cases of humans catching tuberculosis from elephants. Now, Nancy the elephant had bovine tuberculosis, which seems to be less contagious to humans and which elephants haven't so far spread to humans... BUT it has spread to humans from black rhinos, a fairly close relative, so it seems likely that elephants COULD spread it. It can also take a while for TB for incubate (and can also be latent without symptoms), especially for elephants, so the elephants OR keepers who were around Nancy were at serious risk for TB.
NOW HERE IS THE PART THAT I DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT UNTIL TODAY:
Spelman actively tried to COVER UP the situation, potentially putting many more people at risk. The elephant house was closed to zoo guests, but they were only told it was for "renovations." (The actual renovations, incidentally, were to improve ventilation so that illness would be less likely to spread.)
A BBC news crew that came to film the elephants was asked to keep a healthy distance from the elephants for their emotional health and the crew's safety-- the explanation given was that the elephants' group dynamics had been thrown off by Nancy's death. Spelman instructed zoo staff not to mention the TB situation to the BBC crew and, if asked why Nancy died, they were to respond that it was for multiple reasons and that the official test results weren't all back yet.
And here's the most shocking part of all, the part that made me GASP out loud. Spelman still personally gave some special VIP behind-the-scenes tours of the elephant house during the months that the elephant house was closed, a time when the remaining elephant inhabitants could potentially still develop active TB.
One VIP who received an elephant house tour was PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON and five family members!!!!
BILL. CLINTON. THE GOSHDARN PRESIDENT.
While zoo staff says that the tour was deliberately distanced and nobody got close to an elephant, there are photos of Bill Clinton's nephew about a foot away from an elephant's trunk. You know, their nose. The part they can spread disease with. So, uh, definitely in the danger zone there.
Hillary Clinton's brother, Tony Rodham, was on the tour and he said that nobody in the party was warned about TB risk or asked if they had any medical conditions that might (a. make them susceptible to communicable disease, or (b. be contagious to the elephants. This is especially egregious because according to zoo guidelines, all behind-the-scenes tour participants MUST be asked these questions-- not just when there's a very real possibility of a TB outbreak at the zoo.
Fortunately, none of the zoo's other elephants OR keepers ever tested positive for tuberculosis. But it was certainly a close call! And imagine what would have happened if a US President caught TB from a close encounter with an elephant thanks to poorly managed zoo staff.
Presidents meet a lot of people. In fact, this zoo visit happened only 2 weeks before the inauguration of President George W. Bush, which Clinton attended. He very well could have started a TB outbreak there. Heck, TWO US Presidents could have been infected!
Now THAT is something I will be thinking about for a long time!
My mom gave me this chocolate London kit for Christmas and I finally decided to use it as sort of a tongue-in-cheek Fourth of July activity. I love my mom and I don’t think she meant to psychologically torture me, but this experience lowkey led me down a true long dark night of the soul and then utterly broke me. Follow my slow mental unraveling below.
I should add that I am bad at crafts and once got gorilla glue all over my hands while fixing a child’s display-only gingerbread house and spent Christmas break with a hard translucent shell on both hands gradually flaking off over the course of a week, so a fair amount of this may be user error. But also the box says this is for ages 6+ and I’m over 5 times that, so maybe they could have done a wee bit more handholding.
Anyway, here’s my journey, which should absolutely be read in the tone of Jonathan Harker’s letters in the beginning of Dracula.
The first hint that something was wrong happened when I melted the chocolate according to instructions and the next step said to pour it into the molds. The chocolate was not really the “pouring” kind. It was a chunky sort of paste that I had to spoon in. The molds filled unevenly and clumpily and at this point, I asked my husband if he’d let me try to assemble the rest of this on my own because I think I can tolerate my failure better if nobody else witnesses it.
The instructions also cavalierly said to save a “handful” to use as mortar for the chocolate tower.
How much is a handful? A Schmergo-sized hand or a husband-sized hand or what? I have very small hands for an adult, but this is for ages 6+ after all. I opted for a Schmergo-sized handful. I would live to regret that.
I chilled the pieces in the fridge for 20 minutes as directed, then popped them out of their mold. To my surprise, they actually didn’t look THAT bad.
Looking at the pieces of Big Ben that I had to assemble, I became acutely aware that there weren’t detailed instructions on how to fit them together other than just “put them together” and no actual photographs of a real person doing it. The wall pieces were still unnervingly floppy and I decided to freeze them in hopes of hardening them while I focused on the clock itself.
In addition to Big Ben, the kit came with a chocolate taxi and a chocolate double-decker bus. The taxi popped out slightly distorted but in a way I liked, with playful Toontown vibes. But the double-decker bus was still mushy and fudgelike, warping and rippling alarmingly as I tried to push it out of the mold. I opted to put it in the freezer, too, along with the walls of Big Ben.
The instructions said to use the melted remaining chocolate to stick the pieces together and to apply it by sticking my finger in it and rubbing it on. It did not mention that, even after letting the chocolate cool, the warm melted chocolate would make the details of the pieces of the chocolate you’re sticking together start to melt, too.
I began to wonder if this kit had ever been formally tested by anyone and if the instructions were written by AI, like that Google search result that suggests adding Elmer’s glue to your shredded cheese when making pizza to keep it from sliding off.
Nothing can prepare you for how bad the clock part looked, so I’m just going to let you deal with it cold turkey. Et voila.
As I cemented my terrible melted clock together, it occurred to me that I’d have a lot more fun if I really leaned into the ominous post-apocalyptic energy of the abomination before me.
What if this was the result of some kind of whimsical Doctor Who villain— or maybe The Unknown from that infamously bad immersive Willy Wonka experience— transforming major London landmarks into chocolate… during a heat wave?
How will will the new Prime Minister Keir Starmer deal with this on his first day in office?
I yelled to my husband in the adjacent room, “Maybe I’m just turning into the Joker, but this is starting to feel more funny than depressing!”
“Mr. Starmer, a second chocolate vehicle has hit Big Ben.”
The bus actually came out pretty well!
Trying to fit together the pieces of the walls would have been maddening if I hadn’t already been driven mad by the clock portion. The pieces didn’t actually fit together quite right, they were still slightly floppy, and the instructions said— after I was in blood stepped so far that should I wade no more, returning were as tedious as go o’er— that I was supposed to use ELASTIC BANDS to hold together the tower walls while the chocolate was cooling.
The kit didn’t come with elastic bands and I don’t have any in my house except for scrunchies with my gross hair stuck to them, and I’d already come this far, so I decided to forge onward. Then a piece snapped off.
Honestly, this rules, no notes:
I did it, but at what cost? I don’t know much about British politics, but this feels like a poignant commentary on the current state of affairs or something. Should I submit this to the Tate Modern?
Effort expended on playing an evil stepsister in Into the Woods:
* Remembering my lines, blocking, music: 50%
* Washing my hair, putting lots of sticky products in my hair, scrunching my hair, letting my hair air-dry for 6 hours, fluffing my hair, re-washing all of those sticky products out of my hair after the show: 40%
* Untangling my hair from my microphone: 10%
📸 Josef Garcia
People are always so nice to me everywhere I go and it always comes as a surprise. In every place I visit, I always end up having nice little conversations with strangers and exchanging compliments with random women and leaving interactions going, "Wow, they were so nice!" It's weird because I know perfectly well that I have the social skills of a rutabaga, but somehow people seem to realize that I'm friendly and have good intentions despite my awkwardness, like a dog that gets a little too excited.
This was certainly not the case when I was a kid, so it still always comes as a surprise when people are kind to me instead of making fun of me. It's like people's response to me suddenly went from "Horrible gremlin" to "Innocent human, possibly under a curse."
The inspiration for today’s look is pollen being on everything
Sorry the rest of you weren't cool in high school. I can't relate.
I really need to remember that the internet is a small world, that six degrees of Kevin Bacon is very real, and to be less weird online.
A local school board member in my county, Ryan McElveen, became something of a local celebrity in the 2010’s because he was always the first to break the news about snow days on social media. This led to jokes and memes that he controlled the weather.
He was just re-elected to the school board after some years away, and this week he returned to his old specialty of announcing snow days— perfect timing, because it’s our first real snow in over two years. Suspicious timing.
My friend shared his post to her personal Facebook wall (set to friends only!) and I, being the weirdo that I am, commented, “I personally think the return of snow to Fairfax County is due to the return of Ryan McElveen, like when it rains when Simba ascends Pride Rock.”
And who should immediately love react my comment but… Ryan McElveen himself?
If you need me, I’ll be cringing in a corner with a bag on my head. He was not meant to see that. But at least he “loved” it?
For many many years of my life, some would say the prime of my youth, I wrote a lot of fanfiction. And that's how I met many of my dearest friends and that's how I met many of you. For a variety of reasons, I haven't written fanfiction for over a decade (unless you count adapting classic literature for the stage) and haven't been active in that fandom for several years, and the website where I published all my fanfic was taken down for several years.
But recently, when googling myself while looking for something else-- not my real name but Schmergo-- I found that that website is back up and some parts of it are a bizarre and semi-touching time capsule of who I was back then. My profile still says I'm 18 years old (I'm 31) and references the Llama Song.
I also saw that from whenever that website was reinstated, they've counted how many reads the various stories have had and at least one of mine has over 100,000. None of those reads would have been during the years I was actually active on the website. It's so strange to think about that many people meeting a version of me from over a decade ago, seeing all of my weird little author's notes like "Wish me luck at my auditions for Guys and Dolls this weekend!" or "Sorry this chapter is late, my grandma's in the hospital."
The strange thing about growing up on the internet is that that version of me is still around, and perhaps more new people meet her than meet me in real life. I do experience a lesser version of that when I see my old tumblr posts circulating around years later, but that stuff doesn't feel as personal.
When I wrote those fanfictions, I'd never kissed a boy or been on a real date, despite the romantic subplots I sprinkled in there. Now I'm happily married. I uploaded my last fanfiction from my freshman dorm at college. Now I have a full-time job in marketing and have for the past 7 years. I wrote two of my favorite short fanfictions while visiting relatives' homes. Both of those relatives have since passed away. During the years I wrote fanfic, I struggled on and off with bullying and body issues. I'm much more secure in myself as an adult. It's easy to see that those stories were written by someone with much less life experience, knowledge, and awareness than I have now.
What hasn't changed? I mean, I still have a weird fixation on Josh Groban. That's aged well.
Anyway, thank you to everyone who's been with me for all of these different stages of my life! It's been weird!
“The goal of my outfit today is to say, ‘I run a magic school, but one that’s unaccredited and deeply embroiled in multiple legal battles.’”
Tidings of comfort, joy, etc.
I play a character with only one line in a play (one of a few different small roles I play) and the director asked us all to come up with a little character background for each of our roles as homework, and I ended up writing an 800+ word journal entry about her tragic backstory and miserable childhood. Never give me any assignments that involve writing, because I WILL go overboard.