Category Archives: Vicious Animals

April 23, 2013

Toddlers almost fall into the ocean pretty much all the time, right?

By Jeff Vrabel
safety first

Yeah, yeah, I’m working on it.

GateHouse — So it’s totally normal for kids to almost fall off of piers into oceans during trips to the water with their dads, right? That’s a thing that happens pretty regularly? Right? All the time? I’ll take your collective silence as a big yes.

Being a brisk and glorious Sunday morning, and because it had been a gray and pallid Saturday and we were all tired of being in the house with each other, I took my youngest — an 18-month-old mucus production system — out to a local pier for some good old-fashioned rock throwin’. I contend there is no greater activity for children than rock-throwin’, in any capacity. Rock thrown’ into the water, rock thrown’ into the pond, rock throwin’ at a wall. Every Christmas, every single Christmas, we go through this profoundly insane charade of making a gift list, receiving presents from the gift list, opening said presents, writing thank-you notes for said presents and spending a few hours playing with presents that are all like 750% less fun than an average pile of rocks. Geology has given us the perfect toy, and here we are screwing around with Legos and action figures and whatever Monster High is.

So with a day to ourselves we headed to watch people casting nets into the Intracoastal Waterway. We’ve done this a number of times. Once my older son and I came across two fishermen, two youngish guys of probably 20 or so who had not spent a great deal of their day in the field of personal care and at least one of which was, unless he was suffering from a glaucomal condition not readily apparent, probably illegal.

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8 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , | posted in Dad Stories, GateHouse, Humor Columns, Vicious Animals

November 26, 2012

I am unsettled by the appearance of this triceratops in my home

By Jeff Vrabel

Oh, sure, it looks cute until it starts with the HIDEOUS ROARING

GateHouse — So naturally, there is an animatronic triceratops in my house.

It’s right there, six or eight feet behind me, staring at me with dead Rock-A-Fire Explosion eyes that are currently locked open as if to say “That’s right, go ahead and keep thinking we’re extinct.” It is a large thing, maybe three feet tall from foot to the summit of its crested defensive shield. It’s quite lifelike, or at least as lifelike as a three-foot-tall animatronic triceratops sitting in your office in 2012 can be (and when I say “office” I mean “space that contains one old desk and 1,900 plastic baby toys”).

And being a children’s toy that is in my house, it naturally makes unholy amounts of noise, hideous shrieks and hollers that are quite ill-befitting the animal’s herbivorous nature. When you turn this thing on, it basically becomes a self-aware hell beast that makes robot sounds. It sounds like what would happen if a water buffalo gave birth inside one of those old metal garbage cans that Oscar The Grouch lived in, and it does this several dozen times a day, whenever one of my children activate it, which they do, all the time, constantly, because, in their defense, it is a animatronic triceratops in their house, and it is awesome. It’s just about the best toy ever, and yet here I am, passive-aggressively grousing about it in newspapers. Luckily, one of them can’t read yet, so I’m at least 50% safe here.

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4 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , | posted in Dad Stories, GateHouse, Humor Columns, Vicious Animals

May 23, 2012

9 Ways Childbirth Would Be Different If You Were Pregnant With A Killer Whale

By Jeff Vrabel

(Illustration / Stacy Lenz)

NickMom — What? You’ve all thought about it.

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  1. Registry: Plankton plankton plankton plankton plankton plankton plankton plankton.
  2. Everyone laughed when you said you wanted to have an underwater birth BUT WHO’S LAUGHING NOW?

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Read the full list over at NickMom.

1 comment   |  tags: , , , , , | posted in Dad Stories, Humor Columns, NickMom, Vicious Animals

January 10, 2012

Hybrid sharks and Hasselhoff crabs: Why the ocean is trying to kill you

By Jeff Vrabel

Science, yo

GateHouse — IMPORTANT AQUATIC ANIMAL POLL / DRINKING GAME, DEPENDING ON WHAT TIME IT IS ON YOUR INTERNET:

Would you rather find yourself swimming in the ocean with a shark that is a hybrid of two other sharks, or a crab that has been named after American acting treasure David Hasselhoff? And no you can’t say both, no matter how currently paralyzed you are by the urge to do so.

Before you make your decision, let us realize first that the ocean is, of course, filled shelf to shelf with hideous terrors, like those fish that make their own lights, giant goopy squid and giant goopy squid that make their own lights, probably to aid them in eating humans. (There are also eels, of which I do not approve one little bit.) I’m pretty sure that’s the only reason the ocean is there, to serve as a huge Hideous Terrors Production Machine, as well as serve as a super-convenient dumping ground for our industrial waste.

But this week we can add two new items to the list, which is good, because I I haven’t experienced a pants-dampening fear of swimming in the ocean in a while. (Full disclosure: I’ve been snorkeling one time, and it was in Hawaii, and I was nearly devoured whole by a monk seal, which is a lie because they don’t devour people, but it looked mean, and also the snorkeling reef than went from 30 feet deep on one side to 90,000 feet deep on the other, and a manta ray was staring at me with serial-killer eyes and making a slashing motion cross its throat with its manta ray fins, and I am not exactly filled with the desire to get back in the ocean anytime soon. Also once my wife tried to kill me with a shark. Long story.)

Yet, if I were to ever re-enter the deep blue sea, it would not be in Australia, which is where the planet’s most bloodthirsty predators go to practice being more murderous. DO NOT THINK YOU ARE FOOLING ANYONE, WALLABIES.

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4 comments   |  tags: , , , , , | posted in GateHouse, Humor Columns, Quote-Fingers "Science", Vicious Animals

December 13, 2011

You almost certainly have snakes in your Christmas tree. Sorry.

By Jeff Vrabel

Type "Christmas snake" into Google Images. It's fantastic

GateHouse — There are things that are OK, and there are things that are Not OK, and there are things that are Super Not OK, and there are things that are So Not OK That They Make You Slap Your Face And Run To Your Momma, and that is what brings us to the headline “Two Families Find Live Snakes Hiding In Christmas Trees.”

If you needed any more evidence that it’s just wiser to buy a plastic, Taiwanese factory-produced tree at Lowe’s, slap it in a stand and be done in time for the Steelers game, may I present you with the notion that your fancypants Real Tree You Mightily Chopped Down In A Field With The Help Of A Bearded Woodsman Named Fjurg The Sweaty probably contains snakes.

Christmas trees, according to everyone, are the second least-favorable places you can find a snake, the first being, say it with me, the toilet. This is my fourth-greatest fear in life, snakes in the toilet, directly behind clowns, the Fox Business Channel and having my picture taken while scuba diving in the ocean but then having the photographer start gesturing wildly and flailing around because there’s a whale swimming up behind me. That scene in “Finding Nemo” where the whale fades into view and eats the neurotic fish and Ellen? YEAH, WORST FEAR OF LIFE. Most of my more acute fears in life end up in Pixar movies. Weirdest thing.

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10 comments   |  tags: , , , | posted in GateHouse, Holidays, Humor Columns, Vicious Animals

December 5, 2011

I for one welcome our new walking octopus / monstrous insect overlords

By Jeff Vrabel

Abject horror from Gizmodo

GateHouse – The good news: The world will officially not end as a result of the disastrous tsunami of semi-coherent pepperoni-mouthed idiocy that would have defined The Herman Cain Presidency! The bad news: It will probably end as a result of one of the following:

  1. Octopi that walk among us, or
  2. Giant Air Jordan-sized insects that eat carrots and look like they could punch people in the face.

There are two horrendous animals you should check out on the Internet right now, which is weird, because the Internet is mostly used only for cute animals, such as puppies and kitties and squirrels playing harmonicas.

But in this case the Internet has given us a video in which an octopus at a marine reserve is seen swimming around in the water, which is where octopus usually go. The water is where octopi do octopi-like things, such as admire their own arms and destroy Captain Nemo’s submarine and make fun of those commercials where wankers buy each other Lexuses for Christmas. But in the video, after a few seconds, the octopus WALKS OUT OF THE WATER ONTO THE LAND, while onlookers gape and holler and burst into tears and riot and rightfully flee into nearby mountain terrain, WHICH IS EXACTLY WHAT THEY SHOULD BE DOING because octopi DO NOT WALK ON LAND, which you know already if you attended school, even ones in Kentucky.

(Incidentally I’ve just been told that it was actually a giant squid that destroyed Captain Nemo’s submarine, but I can’t think of anything unusually evil that an octopus has done in movies  so I’m leaving it. If anyone knows of some seriously evil octopus shenanigans, email me.)

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8 comments   |  tags: , , , , | posted in GateHouse, Humor Columns, Quote-Fingers "Science", Vicious Animals

October 11, 2011

I can’t help but notice that no one is fleeing in terror from the hairy crazy ants

By Jeff Vrabel

GateHouse— Before the hairy crazy ants came, everything was going pretty well: Ohio State was losing, the AL East was being proficiently escorted out of the playoffs, I dropped a 98-point monster on my friend Matt in Words With Friends (“QUAILS” — holla!) Michelle Bachmann’s candidacy was fading into that permafrost netherworld and the only people still paying attention were lunatic nonagenarians from Iowa. Oh, and get this I FIXED A TOILET, by myself, USING TOOLS, sort of, and it stayed fixed until the next day when it was clearly still broken, but man, that was a deeply satisfying 12 hours.

And then, with everything swimming along swimmingly, I learned that the South — one of America’s largest, most buttery regions — was being invaded by hairy crazy ants.

This is their actual name: “hairy crazy ants.” This is their actual name because coming up with any other name for them would be pointless; you could call them “formicidae inferi” or “streptococcus abugslifei” or “Stuart” and it wouldn’t matter because everyone would just say “SWEET CHILD OF HOSANNA WHAT ARE THESE HAIRY CRAZY ANTS DOING IN MY SCRAMBLED EGGS?” (Or I guess I should say “WHAT ARE THEY DOING ALL OVER MY NASCAR FUNNEL CAKES AND TAYLOR SWIFT MUDFLAPS” because, again, American South. On the plus side if they’re invading the South and least this isn’t one of those plagues sent to wipe out gay people trying to get married.)

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8 comments   |  tags: , , , , | posted in GateHouse, Humor Columns, Vicious Animals

August 30, 2011

If you ever find yourself dreaming there’s a spider on your neck, wake up and CHECK THAT RIGHT OUT

By Jeff Vrabel

Pretty sure this was the animal that was on my face

GateHouse — Important safety tip: If you ever find you’re having a dream in which there’s a spider crawling on your neck, wake up and check it out immediately. And I will tell you why.

(Yes I realize this is the second childish spider-related column in a few weeks for you regular readers — and hello again to Mom and whoever keeps coming across my blog looking for “drunk chimp” — but howsabout you wake up to find a spider crawling near your valuable face and offer me some judgey thoughts on topic selection.)

There I was, contentedly dozing away, adrift in an ever-shifting wonderland in my dreams and, if The Other People Who Live In My House are to be believed, snoring like a psychopath in the real world (IT’S A MEDICAL CONDITION, YOU GUYS ARE MEAN), when I noticed what felt like something foreign and small fidgeting about in my hair.

Now, this first happened when I was in a sort of half-dreamstate, the bleary, smudgy netherspace between Wide Awake and Apparently Being Chased By A Laughing Clown Through Six Flags Great America in Gurnee, Ill. If memory serves, I was about halfway through a careening hellride on a roller coaster whose track had had not yet been completed  — apparently my dreams don’t have SAFETY INSPECTIONS — when I noticed, somewhere in the haze of anticipating an impending plummeting-based death, a sort of tickle taking place only my head. Having mastered inception, of course, I woke right up (#jokesfromlastsummer).

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10 comments   |  tags: , , , , , | posted in GateHouse, Humor Columns, Vicious Animals

July 19, 2011

Large and possibly hairy spiders in your house: Squish or release?

By Jeff Vrabel

According to my son, this animal is not harmful to humans. So go ahead. Stick out your hand.

GateHouse — So I’ve found spiders crawling on me twice today.

Small spiders, sure. Un-fatal spiders, I think, although it can be hard to tell because spiders are cunning and often disguise themselves as non-fatal spiders in order to sneak into places and sometimes pass through airport security.

But twice I have looked down upon my own shirt to find myself being traversed by something with body sections, multiple legs and venom — or, if not venom, at least pincers, which is basically scientific code-word for “venom.” Either way this is not going to mean anything very positive for my evening’s sleep schedule.

Now, I pride myself on being powerfully and masculinely unafraid of most things, including inventing adverbs for pointless jokes. Most things, that is, except for spiders. And the at-least-two snakes who live in my backyard now. And that skywalk thing with the glass floors on the 750th story at the former Sears Tower in Chicago. Also, the spectral librarian from “Ghostbusters” and those dreams about rollercoasters and clowns. Otherwise, I’m good.

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30 comments   |  tags: , , , , | posted in Culture And / Or News, Dad Stories, GateHouse, Humor Columns, Vicious Animals

March 1, 2011

The Many Adventures Of The Drunken German Traffic-Snarling Schnapps Owl, And Tigger Too

By Jeff Vrabel

Look at this drunken fool. Embarrassing.

GateHouse — Not counting a grievous error in college involving two hamsters and a bottle we thought was marked “water” but which was actually labeled “vodka,” I have never purposefully gotten an animal drunk.

That said, I have frequently and snortiferously laughed at a great many drunk animals: Mojo the helper monkey; that chimp from the Burt Reynolds movies; Tom, whenever Jerry pours a full bottle of red wine down his throat; Michelle Bachmann. Frankly, that sunny day in college when we found Norm and Dan bumbling down the dorm hallway in their adorable little mouse-ball, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t find the whole episode a small bit awesome. (Reassuring Epilogue: The hamsters survived and I believe were tougher for it, although I’m pretty sure they never drank from the water bottle in their cage again. Also, we think they ate their babies, which we initially chalked up to alcohol poisoning but it turns out is just something hamsters do.)

For this reason I wish I was in Germany a few weeks ago, not just for the lush beaches and abundant sunshine but because there was an owl who got loaded on schnapps and screwed up traffic for like an hour. If you can find a part of that sentence that isn’t awesome, we wouldn’t have much to talk about at lunch.

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AC/DC – Who Made Who

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1 comment   |  tags: , , , , | posted in Culture And / Or News, GateHouse, Humor Columns, Vicious Animals

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