From the Head

According to a recent study, office workers who sit near rest rooms have more than twice as many nightmares as other employees. Sleep experts conclude that knowledge of bathroom habits and frequency of rest room trips, combined with the sounds coworkers make while in the rest rooms, trigger the nightmares, which tend to run the gamut from scary monsters to sex with deceased relatives.

Life Slaver

I am eight and I am standing with my family in a carpet store. The salespeople double team us. The man does the serious talking with Mom and Dad while the woman ushers the children to another part of the store. She is holding a pack of Lifesavers.

“I’ll show you a trick,” she says.

Each of us accepts one Lifesaver, and we pop them into our mouths. The saleswoman continues, “Now, come over to the water fountain, take a drink, and see what happens. Do you know what will happen?” We follow her instructions. The searing cold water, somehow enhanced by the Lifesaver, spills over my lips. “It makes it extra cold!” I say, astonished.

A week later, there is a shiny, blue carpet covering the entire second floor in our new house.

Noxious Nocturnals

The kinkajou is a nocturnal animal, spending the day sleeping in tree holes. A daytime nap in trees has risks. From above, birds such as the harpy eagle and Isidor's eagle search for sleeping kinkajous. Other predators prowl from below. The jaguar and the ocelot may pounce quickly and devour an entire family in one bite. As a result, the kinkajou has evolved a fallschirm, which is a kind of organic, exploding parachute. When a jaguar swallows a large kinkajou, stomach acids erode the outer layer of the animal, releasing the fallschirm rip cord. The whole thing makes for such a bloody mess I can't even think about it. Fortunately for those people who have their heads in the sand about such things, I made the last part up.