A few small articles for you today. I couldn’t resist sharing these snippets of strangeness I found.
Singleton Argus 14 Jul 1937 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article81904262
I love the things that used to make it into the newspapers.
In the first case it is an article about a large bee hive in the ceiling of a soon to be demolished house. It contained both 30lb+ of honey and also, interestingly contained two doves eggs surrounded by wax.
This second article is stranger though. A doctor found a number of genuine pearls when operating on a patient. Wow! Real pearls!
The Northern Miner 13 Wed 1933 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article81234026
I wonder how many times actual pearls have been found inside a persons kidneys?
Do you think that maybe these pearl-like things were just smooth and shiny kidney stones? I really hope that they were never set into jewellery…. ick….
-giggles- You have a real way with the macabre! Perhaps kidney stone sufferers could start a new growth industry? -runs-
I have this vision of someone out there, somewhere, it could be any of you readers…. treasuring that pendant or ring encrusted with tiny pearls, handed down through the family. Little do they know the origin of those….things…. 😛
Ebay here I come! :p
I can just see a jeweller being given some heirlooms for appraisal. Looking closely. Getting suspicious. Ewwwww! Throwing piece across the room and running for the disinfectant 🙂
lol – but…but.. what does a kidney stone look like????
I did look it up because I thought they looked nothing like a pearl. I couldn’t find any that did, although I didn’t really look that hard! I did find suggestions that they can be smooth so I guess it just depends on the kidney involved.
Oh god I just had a flash of a human oyster farm – each kidney hand picked. Yuck yuck yuck…
Ewwwwww…………………. Next time the Man has oysters I might have to leave the room!
I’m so glad I can’t eat them. You realise we may have put a serious dint in the demand for oysters?
I still can’t believe there is a demand for them in the first place! Ick. 😀
I know 😦 Just looking at them triggers my gag response. Must be an acquired taste. Where on earth would you acquire it though?
The only thing that would make me happy to eat them would be imminent starvation!
Mmmm….even then I’d have to have a clothespeg over my nose. 😦
I wonder if the eggs were there when the hive was built so that it surrounded them. I have visions of a poor dove trying to get back to it’s eggs only to find a hive in their place.
As for the pearls, does this mean any day scientists will be announcing we are descended from Oysters instead of apes?
I had a similar vision, the dove going out one day and coming home to find the hive busily building right in their spot. Maybe it should have just knocked on the door and asked to borrow a cup of sugar and a few eggs?
That is peculiar about the dove eggs. I wonder if the bees found an old bird’s nest when they moved into the roof and just built their hive around it, or if they left and the birds nested in eating up the remaining grubs and larvae?
It is strange that they don’t mention a nest of any sort. The article suggests that the eggs were just encased in wax doesn’t it? Strange. I don’t think any bird will lay their egg without some sort of preparations. Maybe there was an abandoned nest higher up that disintegrated, the eggs slipping down and being incorporated into the hive.
I would rather it was the eggs of gigantic mutant bees, interrupted before they had a chance to hatch and take over the world 😉
Or maybe the bees used the dove eggs as giant queen cells for giant mutant queens. Equally terrifying! 🙂
All in the name of genetic diversity…… and world domination!!! 😀
“A doctor found a number of genuine pearls when operating on a patient”
He probably found it around the patients neck and claimed to have found it in the kidney. I’m joking of course. 😉
I laughed at the thought of them being ‘equalling the finest ordinary pearls in lustre’ but being as small as pinheads. He must have had pretty good eyesight!