Dave Barry Talks Back

by Dave Barry

  The Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump is a historical site and tourist attraction in Alberta, Canada. Canada, as you know, is a major important nation boasting a sophisticated, cosmopolitan culture that was tragically destroyed last week by beavers.

  Ha ha! Don’t mind me. I like to toss out little “zingers” about Canada from time to time because I enjoy getting mounds of letters from irate Canadians who are Sick and Tired of Americans belittling Canada and who often include brochures full of impressive Canadian Facts such as that Canada is the world’s largest producer of magnesium dentures as well as the original home of Michael J. Fox, Big Bird, Plato, etc.

  The thing is, I like Canada. It’s clean, and it makes good beer. Also it has a spirit of general social cooperation that you find lacking in the States, a good example being the metric system. You may recall that a while back we were all supposed to convert to the metric system from our current system of measurement, which is technically known as the “correct” or “real” system. The metric conversion was supposed to result in major economic benefits deriving from the fact that you, the consumer, would suddenly have no idea how the hell much anything cost. Take coleslaw. Under the current system, coleslaw is sold in easily understood units of measurement called “containers,” as in “Gimme one of them containers of coleslaw if it’s fresh.” In a metric supermarket, however, the deli person would say, “How much do you want? A kilometer? A hectare? Hurry up! My break starts in five liters!” You’d get all confused and wind up buying enough coleslaw to fill a wading pool, and the economy would prosper.

  So the metric conversion was clearly a good idea, and when the government started putting up metric highway signs (SPEED LIMIT 173 CENTIPEDES) Americans warmly responded by shooting them down. Thus the metric system did not really catch on in the States, unless you count the increasing popularity of the nine-millimeter bullet.

  Meanwhile, the Canadians, being cooperative, quietly went ahead and actually converted. I know this because I was on a Canadian radio program once, and the host announced that the temperature was “8.” This was obviously a lie, so I asked him about it, and he confided, off the air, that the real temperature, as far as he knew, was around 40. But then his engineer said he thought it was more like 50, and soon other radio personnel were chiming in with various other interpretations of “8,” and I was struck by the fact that these people had cheerfully accepted, in the spirit of cooperation, a system wherein nobody really knew what the temperature was. (The correct mathematical answer is: chilly.)

  The point I am making is that Canada is a fascinating and mysterious country, which is why we should not be surprised to learn that it is the location of the Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump historical site and tourist attraction. I found out about this from an extremely alert reader named Sandy LaFave, who sent me an article from the Fort McLeod Tourist Greeter that explains the whole buffalo-jump concept.

  It seems that many moons ago (in metric, 14.6 megamoons) North America was occupied by large and fortunately very stupid herds of buffalo. Certain Native American tribes used to obtain their food by disguising themselves in buffalo skins and going from tepee to tepee shouting “Trick or Treat!”

  No, seriously, according to the Fort McLeod Tourist Greeter, they disguised themselves so they could lure a buffalo herd closer and closer to a cliff, then stampede it over the edge. That’s where the “Buffalo Jump” part of the name comes from. The “Head-Smashed-In” part comes from a native legend, which holds that one time a young brave (probable tribal name: “Not Nuclear Physicist”) decided to watch the hunt while standing under the cliff. According to the Tourist Greeter, he “watched the buffalo topple in front of him like a mighty waterfall…. When it was over and the natives were butchering the animals, they found him under the pile of dead buffalo with his head smashed in.”

  Even thousands of years later, it is difficult to ponder this tragedy without choking back large, moist snorts of anguish. But some good has come of it. The Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump has been declared a World Heritage Site (“as are the pyramids in Egypt and the Taj Mahal in India,” notes the Tourist Greeter). The Alberta government has constructed an interpretive centre (note metric spelling) where activities are held. “There’s always something to see and do at the Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump Interpretive Centre and this summer is no exception,” states an official schedule. I have called the centre, and when they answer the phone, they say, very politely—I absolutely swear this is true—“Head-Smashed-In, may I help you?”

  And the scary part is, I think maybe they can.

  FLYING FISH

  We certainly do not wish to cause widespread panic, but we are hereby warning the public to be on the lookout for falling trout.

  We base this warning on an alarming article from the Bangor Daily News, sent in by alert reader Jane Heart, headlined TORPEDO APPROACH USED TO STOCK LAKES WITH TROUT. According to the article, the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries is restocking lakes by dropping trout from airplanes. A hatchery official notes that the trout, which weigh about a pound each, drop from 100 to 150 feet “like hundreds of little torpedoes.”

  This article should cause extreme concern on the part of anyone who is familiar with gravity, which was discovered in 1684 by Sir Isaac Newton, who was sitting under a tree when an apple landed on his head, killing him instantly. A one-pound trout would be even worse. According to our calculations, if you dropped the trout from 150 feet, it would reach a speed of … let’s see, 150 feet times 32 feet per second, at two pints to the liter, minus the radius of the hypotenuse, comes to … a high rate of speed. Anybody who has ever seen a photograph showing the kind of damage that a trout traveling that fast can inflict on the human skull knows that such photographs are very valuable. I paid $20 for mine.

  And yet here we see Maine, which we usually think of as a quiet, responsible state known primarily for sleet, deliberately causing potentially lethal fish to hurtle at high velocities toward Earth, residence of many members of the public.

  Oh, I realize the program is not designed to harm the public. But even highly trained pilots are not perfect. Consider the three pilots who were recently convicted of flying drunk on a commercial flight, during which they aroused suspicion by instructing the passengers to fasten their seat belts because of “snakes in the engine.” I am not accusing the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries of using drunk pilots, but if one of them did have a few, and happened to fly over, say, a Shriners convention while carrying a full load of trout, the temptation to let those babies go would be irresistible. To us, anyway.

  What is especially alarming is that this is not the first time that government agencies have dropped potentially lethal creatures from planes. An even scarier example is discussed in an article in the October 1990 issue of Air Force magazine, which was alertly sent to us by John Breen. The article, by C. V. Glines, is entitled “The Bat Bombers,” and we urge you to read the whole thing yourself, because otherwise you are not going to believe us.

  In brief, here’s what the article says:

  In December 1941, shortly after Pearl Harbor, a Pennsylvania dental surgeon named Lytle S. Adams thought of a way that the United States could fight back against Japan. It will come as no surprise to anyone who has undergone dental surgery that the idea he came up with was: attaching incendiary bombs to bats and dropping them out of airplanes. The idea was that the bats would fly into enemy buildings, and the bombs would go off and start fires, and Japan would surrender.

  So Dr. Adams sent his idea to the White House, which laughed so hard that it got a stomachache.

  No! That’s what you’d expect to happen, but instead the White House sent the idea to the U.S. Army, which, being the U.S. Army, launched a nationwide research effort to determine the best kind of bat to attach a bomb to. By 1943 the research team had decided on the free-tailed bat, which “could fly fairly well with a one-ounce bomb.” Thousands of these bats were collected and—remember, we are not making any of this up—pl
aced in ice-cube trays, which were then refrigerated to force the bats to hibernate so bombs could be attached to them. On May 23, 1943, a day that every schoolchild should be forced to memorize, five groups of test bats, equipped with dummy bombs, were dropped from a B-25 bomber flying at 5,000 feet. Here, in the dramatic words of the article, is what happened next:

  “Most of the bats, not fully recovered from hibernation, did not fly and died on impact.”

  Researchers continued to have problems with bats failing to show the “can-do” attitude you want in your night-flying combat mammal. Also there was an incident wherein “some bats escaped with live incendiaries aboard and set fire to a hangar and a general’s car.”

  At this point the Army, possibly sensing that the project was a disaster, turned it over to the Navy. Really. “In October 1943, the Navy leased four caves in Texas and assigned Marines to guard them,” states the article. The last thing you want, in wartime, is for enemy agents to get hold of your bats.

  The bat project was finally canceled in 1944, having cost around $2 million, which is a bargain when you consider what we pay for entertainment today.

  But our point is, the government has a track record of dropping animals out of airplanes, and there is no reason to believe that this has stopped. Once the government gets hold of a truly bad idea, it tends to cling to it. For all we know, the Defense Department is testing bigger animals, capable of carrying heavier payloads. We could have a situation where, because of an unexpected wind shift, thousands of semi-frozen, parachute-wearing musk oxen come drifting down into a major population center and start lumbering confusedly around with high explosives on their backs. We definitely should have some kind of contingency plan for stopping them. Our best weapon is probably trout.

  AMPHIBIOUS ASSAULT

  You can imagine how alarmed I was when I found out that I had been swimming in the same waters as the Giant Perverted Turtle. Unless of course you have not yet heard about the Giant Perverted Turtle, in which case please be advised that, until we get this thing cleared up, you should avoid submerging yourself in any body of water unless it has a drain and a soap dish.

  I found out about this story when numerous alert readers sent me an article from the Reporter, a newspaper published in the Florida Keys, headlined TURTLE ATTACK IS REPORTED. Immediately I interrupted my regular journalism routine of staring fixedly at individual pieces of ceiling dirt, because it just so happens that my major hobby, aside from turning off lights and appliances that have been turned on days earlier by my son, is scuba diving off the Florida Keys. You go out to the reef, bouncing over the waves, then you dive in and admire the incredible variety of marine life that is attracted by other diving enthusiasts barfing over the side of the charter boat.

  No, really, you see some fascinating things down there. I once got to see what fishing looks like from the fish end. There, dangling in the current, was a largish hook, to which had been attached a disgusting thing such as you might be served in a sushi restaurant. Staring at this thing was a small formal gathering of filefish, which is a fish with pursed lips and a bulging forehead that make it look very serious, as though it should be carrying a little briefcase and doing the other fishes’ tax returns. As the other filefish watched, the first one would swim forward, take the sushi in its mouth, spit it out immediately, then swim to the end of the line. Then the next fish would repeat this procedure, and the next, and so on (“Yuck! You try it, Norm!” “OK! Yuck! You try it, Walter!” “OK! Yuck! You try …”). If I’d had a waterproof pen and paper with me, I’d have stuck a little note on the hook saying, “THEY DON’T LIKE IT.”

  This experience gave me an idea. Remember when President Bush was taking his biweekly vacation up in Kenneth E. Bunkport IV, Maine, and he failed to catch any fish, day after day, until it became a national news story of greater urgency than Lebanon, and the whole federal government apparatus seemed to shudder to a halt while the Leader of the Free World, the man most responsible for dealing with pressing and increasingly complex national and international issues, was off somewhere trying to outwit an organism with a brain the size of a hydrogen atom? Well my idea is, next time we have this problem, we send some U.S. Naval frogpersons down there to attach a fish manually to the presidential hook. These would have to be trusted frogpersons, not pranksters, because America would definitely be a laughingstock among nations if the president were to engage in a fierce three-hour angling struggle and finally, triumphantly, haul out, say, a sheep.

  But before we implement this program, we need to do something about the Giant Perverted Turtle. According to the Reporter article, written by outdoor writer Bob T. Epstein, there’s a very aggressive male 300-pound loggerhead turtle that lurks in the water under one of the bridges in the Florida Keys and—I am not making this up—keeps trying, very forcefully, to mate with human divers. What is worse, Epstein says, in at least one case the turtle actually succeeded. I’m not going to give details of this occurrence in a family newspaper, except to say that if we ever decide we need some form of punishment harsher than the death penalty, this would be a strong candidate.

  JUDGE: I sentence the defendant to be put in the lagoon with Bart.

  DEFENDANT: NO! NOT THE TURTLE!

  I called up one of the divers who’d reportedly been attacked, a real estate agent named Bruce Gernon, who confirmed the whole thing, but asked me to stress that he successfully fought the turtle off. So let the record show that the turtle did not get to first base with Mr. Gernon. But clearly we have a serious problem here. Bob Epstein told me that, since his story appeared, he has been contacted almost daily by people who have been molested by large sea creatures but never told anybody. “This is a sensitive area,” Epstein said. “People are reluctant to talk about that aspect of their relationships with turtles or seals or dolphins or walruses.”

  Did you hear that? Walruses.

  (DEFENDANT: NOOOOO!!)

  Fortunately this alarming story is getting attention from leading science authorities: Epstein told me he had been contacted by both the Letterman and Sajak shows. So action is being taken, and not a moment too soon, either, because—this appears to be a related story—several alert readers have sent me an Associated Press article stating that two marine biologists in a submarine 690 feet deep, far off the coast of Alaska, discovered, lying on the ocean floor: a cow. I am still not making this up. Needless to say the cow was deceased. God alone knows how it got there. One obvious possibility is prankster frogpersons, but we cannot rule out the possibility that the cow was abducted by lust-crazed walruses. Fortunately the biologists were able to make a videotape, starring Rob Lowe, so we should have some answers soon. Until then, I’m not going to even take a shower. Not that this is anything new.

  CHILDREN MAY BE HAZARDOUS TO YOUR HEALTH

  It’s time for Alarming Medical News Items, the popular feature that can strike at any time without warning symptoms. For your protection, this column undergoes a rigorous fact-checking procedure under which, before we will print an item, it must first be delivered to us by the United States Postal Service. Don’t bother to thank us: We aren’t listening.

  Speaking of which, our first alarming item concerns the recently discovered:

  EAR PROBLEM FROM HELL

  We learned about this thanks to alert reader Diane Eicher, who sent in an American Medical Association newsletter containing an article about a North Carolina man who went to his doctor complaining of a “full sensation” in one ear, accompanied by a hearing loss. The doctor checked it out, and found that the man’s ear canal was blocked by—we are not making this up—a plug of hardened Super Glue.

  Now some of you are scratching your heads and wondering, “How does a person with an IQ higher than pastry get Super Glue in his EAR and not know it?” But you parents out there are no doubt nodding your heads and saying: “It would not surprise me to learn that this man has a three-year-old son.”

  And, of course, you’re right, according to the AMA newslett
er, the son “squirted the glue into the father’s left ear while the man was sleeping.” Fortunately surgeons were able to unclog the man’s ear, but as medical consumers we can prevent this kind of near-tragedy by remembering to take these safety precautions:

  Never keep three-year-old children around the house.

  If you do, never sleep.

  Also: You older children should remember that Super Glue is a serious household repair substance and NOT a toy to be used in such pranks as applying it to the toilet seats in the Faculty Men’s Room, taking care to first prepare the surface by wiping it clean of oil and dirt.

  Our next item was brought to our attention by Debbie and Lindsey Mackey, who alerted us to an article in the British medical journal the Lancet with the title:

  “EXPLODING HEAD SYNDROME”

  Quite frankly we were disappointed by this syndrome. We naturally assumed, from the title, that it would involve the actual explosion of a person’s head, ideally Barry Manilow’s in concert. But it turns out to be just this weenie syndrome where you wake up in the middle of the night having “a violent sensation of explosion in the head.” Big deal. We get that all the time, but you don’t see us whining to the Lancet. You see us making a mental note to drink gin from smaller containers.

  But not right now. Right now we want to tell you about the exciting new:

  ADVANCES IN B.O. MEASUREMENT

  We found out about this through alert readers James McNab and Shelley Owens, who sent us an article from the Journal of the American Society for Heating, Refrigeration and Air-Conditioning Engineers written by a man named—we are still not making this up—“P. Ole Fanger.” Mr. Fanger, who hails from Denmark, has done a LOT of research in the field of measuring exactly how much a given human being tends to stink up a given room, and he has come up with a unit of air pollution called the “olf” (“from the Latin olfactus, or olfactory sense”). To quote the article: “One olf is the emission rate of air pollutants (bioeffluents) from a standard person (Figure 1).”