Showing posts with label Alligators. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Alligators. Show all posts

Sunday, July 05, 2015

Real Animal Attacks 2015!



CBS's Zoo television series began June 30, 2015. 

It is almost as if the program saw into the future.


Discovery's Shark Week, the real kind, apparently already began.

There is something going on with the animals. There have been recent attacks by sharks, alligators, sturgeon, lion, tiger, and leopard. Despite the warning signs, in some cases, the humans ventured forth into these encounters.


Sharks




An increase of shark attacks, especially along the Carolina coasts, during the summer of 2015 has not gone unnoticed. The number is large enough for sharks to become a media story. Last time this happened? In which sharks became a media focus? 2001.



















The most recent attack was ironic because it was against a past member of the media.

A former editor-in-chief at The Boston Herald suffered serious injuries after he dramatically tried to fight off a 7-foot shark Wednesday [July 1, 2015] off the coast of North Carolina.
Andrew F. Costello reportedly came face-to-face with the monster while vacationing with his family at the coastal town of Ocracoke.
Costello, 68, was swimming with his son around noon when the attack occurred.
"I could see from where I was standing that he had a big baseball-sized chunk of flesh taken off of his leg right above his knee and there was a lot of blood everywhere," Jackson Fuqua, 15, who witnessed the attack, told The Boston Herald.
“I saw a big trail of blood from the water to where the man was laying down on a beach towel. There were a lot of EMS workers all around him and they were frantically trying to help him and work to close the wounds he had,” Fuqua told the paper.
Costello suffered wounds to his ribcage, lower leg, hip and hands, according to the paper. He is reportedly in fair condition at Vidant Medical Center in Greenville.

The synchromystic world actually started talking about the "shark imagery" back in February 2015.







In 2015, on the Sunday after July 4th, it becomes "Shark Week" on the Discovery Channel. 


Few remember that during 2001, the "Summer of the Shark" began on the 4th of July.

Shark attacks generally get more attention by the media than most news. Except for mass shootings, school shootings, workplace violence, and terrorist attacks.

Time Magazine in 2001 acknowledged it was “The Summer of the Shark,” even though statistically, there were less attacks than in some other years.

Alligators



But there was something more sinister waiting in the wings - 9/11, of course. First, however, another animal got the headlines; the "Summer of the Gator" happened too in 2001.

In my twilight language book, The Copycat Effect: How the Media and Popular Culture Trigger the Mayhem in Tomorrow's Headlines (NY: Simon and Schuster, 2004), I noted the unfolding of the "if it bleeds, it leads" focus on shark and alligator attacks. The media, almost completely, forgot about animal encounters after the Twin Towers came down. Terrorism and war were the new wall-to-wall coverage for months.

The news for 2015 is now shifting to alligator attacks too.

Word reached me from the director of Southern Fried Bigfoot that a violent encounter with an alligator occurred on June 28, 2015, at Charlotte Lake, Cedar Hill Park, Wallisville, Texas. A 13-year-old boy, Kaleb, was swimming near the shore when bitten in the arm and leg by an alligator. The gator also began to pull him under the water. Kaleb's father, James Hurley, jumped in the water, kicked the alligator off his son, and pulled Kaleb to safety. Both Kaleb and James Hurley are recovering at the hospital. Source.


Seventy-five miles away, also in Texas, there was an alligator fatality early Friday morning, July 3, 2015.


Tommie Woodward, 28, (pictured above, from his Facebook page) suffered severe trauma to a limb when he was attacked early Friday morning at the private marina, which is along a bayou extending from the Sabine River near the Louisiana line, Orange, Texas, police Captain Robert Enmon reported. The alligator was estimated to be 11 feet long.


The owners of the marina recently had spotted a large alligator on a few occasions, and put up a sign warning people to stay out of the water, police said. Woodward reportedly when told this, yelled out "F*ck the alligators," and jumped in.

According to the Beaumont Enterprise, the incident was the first fatal attack by an alligator in Texas in about 200 years.

Cody

Then on Saturday, July 4, 2015, an 8-foot alligator grabbed Mike Karris' 11-year-old dachshund, Cody, at the boat ramp in the St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge in Florida. Karris and his girlfriend were unable to rescue their dog. The last attack on a dog was more than 15 years ago. Source.

Sturgeon



There's also a problem with leaping sturgeon. In Florida, boaters are infrequently, but routinely hurt by sturgeon jumping from rivers and colliding into people in boats.

On May 23, 2015, on the Santa Fe River, a sturgeon crashed through a boat windshield, injuring the driver of a boat. Early in June 2015, a sturgeon in the Suwanee River in Manatee Springs State Park jumped into a boat with 14-year-old Heavyn Nash and knocked her unconscious. Nash was fishing with her mother and grandfather when the 4- to 6-foot fish decided to join them.


A jumping sturgeon on the Suwannee River. Florida Fish and Wildlife

Then on July 2, 2015, a fatality took place. A 5-year-old girl was killed after a sturgeon leaped out of a northern Florida river and struck her while she was boating with her family, state wildlife officials said. Jaylon Rippy died after getting hit by the fish on the Suwannee River, south of Lake City, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission said in a statement posted on the Suwannee Democrat Bulletin. Her mother, Tanya Faye Rippy, and 9-year-old brother, Trevor Rippy, were injured by the sturgeon, as well.

On Friday, July 3, 2015, two adults traveling in a boat on the Santa Fe River between the Suwannee River and a Branford area campground were also struck by a leaping sturgeon, Fish and Wildlife Commission officials said in a statement.

Lion, Tiger, and Leopard

Big cats have been in the news too.

The lion that would kill was photographed moments before the attack, by another tourist (above) and by the victim (below).


On June 1, 2015, New Yorker Katherine Chappell, 29, was killed by a lion when she rolled her window down to take photographs. This occurred at the Lion Park, near Johannesburg, South Africa that had clear signs warning its visitors.

Clear signs prohibiting open windows are found at the park.


Chappell was as an Emmy-award-winning visual-effects artist on HBO’s Game of Thrones. She also had worked on Captain America and Godzilla.


The white tiger at the zoo before its escape.

An escaped zoo white tiger killed a 43-year-old warehouse worker on June 17, 2015. Police then shot and killed the white tiger in Tbilisi, Georgia. Severe flooding allowed hundreds of wild animals to escape the city zoo in this country that was part of the former Soviet Union. The tiger attack happened at a warehouse in the city center. The animal had been unaccounted for since the weekend floods destroyed the zoo premises. Doctors said the man was attacked in the throat and died before reaching the hospital. Source.


A leopard attack on July 2, 2015, also occurred in South Africa. A guide at South Africa's most famous national park, Kruger National Park, survived a leopard attack after a tourist scared the animal away with his car.
The incident occurred Thursday afternoon at the wild animal game park as the guide drove an Open Safari Vehicle (OSV) past some leopards. One of the leopards was the vehicle's group of people lost sight of it. The leopard had gone around to the driver's side and jumped at the guide, clamping down on his arm.
"Everybody in the OSV started hitting the leopard with any object they had with them," the park said.
A tourist driving another vehicle raced over and used the truck to scare away the leopard.
"We would like to thank the tourist from another vehicle for his quick and decisive action as he saved the guide and tourists' lives," park general manager William Mabasa said in the statement.
The guide was treated for his injuries. Source.

What's next? 

Friday, July 03, 2015

4th of July Danger? After Church Burnings, Self-Immolations, Doctors' Deaths, Shark Attacks, and Other Mayhem?


We don't know what will happen on July 4th. The mainstream media has been beating the drums all week that a possible terrorist event - ISIS maybe, a homegrown individual or group maybe - will occur on Saturday, July 4th, in the United States of America, on our Independence Day.
Americans across the country have big plans for the 4th of July, but the FBI and Homeland Security are warning Americans of potential “lone wolf” attacks this holiday weekend.
The FBI’s most recent bulletin warns specifically of “lone wolf” attacks, which are attacks carried out by homegrown extremists. However, they also said no credible threats have been made so far. Source.
Maybe, maybe not. It almost seems as if CNN, MSNBC, Fox, and other news outlets will be disappointed if nothing happens. It's a weird feeling out there.

Update: "FBI Cancels ALL VACATIONS For Agents Over 4th of July Weekend."

Look, many of us in the sync, twilight language, conspiracy, law enforcement, psychology, and Fortean worlds are picking up on these times being especially bizarre. There is literally a list of randomly separate incidents that are very disquieting. I've been gathering these tallies, and I have even made predictions based on future trends reinforced in past patterns.

I am certainly guilty of this. I felt the end of June was giving out all kinds of signals. The anniversary syndrome told me that June 24th might have a little bump of incidents. I wrote:

"Not sure if it is a fire, a ufologist's death, an assassination, another church shooting, a form of mass violence or what, but something is in the air." ~ June 24: A "Hot" Date in 2015?Twilight Language, June 19, 2015.

What happened?

It appears there was a significant UFO-related death on June 24, 2015. Former Congressman Mario Biaggi died. He had assisted ufologists with their UFO disclosure movement. (See here.)

Additionally, beginning after I penned the "prediction," African-American churches, in the South, began burning. This was said to be directly related to the killing of 9 members of the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in downtown Charleston, South Carolina, United States, on June 17, 2015.

Here is one map of seven of these fires:



Here's a list (of seven in the South, one in Ohio):

College Hill Seventh-day Adventist — Knoxville, Tennessee, June 22, 2015.
The Knoxville Fire Department is investigating the fire, stating it was arson.

God's Power Church of Christ —Macon, Georgia, June 23, 2015.
Macon-Bibb County public information stated that the blaze was being investigated as arson.

Fruitland Presbyterian Church — Gibson County, Tennessee, June 23, 2015.
State bomb and arson investigators determined a lightning strike hit the church steeple at about 8:30 pm.

Briar Creek Road Church — Charlotte, North Carolina, June 24, 2015.
The Charlotte Fire Department ruled the flame was arson. It is worthy of noting that it was the June 24th fire that raised everyone's awareness that there seemed to be a "wave" of church burnings. The photograph of that fire was widely disseminated.



Glover Grove Baptist — Gloverville-Warrenville, South Carolina, June 26, 2015.
Officials have not yet determined a cause for the fire.

Greater Miracle Apostolic Holiness Church — Tallahassee, Florida, June 26, 2015.
Tallahassee Fire Department and State Fire Marshal investigators believe the fire was caused by an electrical wire. Investigations are still under way.

College Heights Baptist Church - Elyria, Ohio - June 27, 2015.
Mount Zion African Methodist Episcopal Church — Greeleyville, South Carolina, June 30, 2015. Williamsburg County Fire department said the cause of the blaze was unclear, although lightning is being blamed in recent news stories.

The point is not so much that all of these fires are arsons, but in a Fortean point of view, it is a cluster of curious church fires, whether they be human arsons or God's arson, so-to-speak. The wave is noticeable.

[We need a good list of all the locations that Confederate generals and soldier statues have been defaced, as well. No one has compiled one of those. I have mentioned this has been happening to memorials and statues of John Hunt Morgan (see here), as well as John Calhoun, Nathan Bedford Forrest, Robert E. Lee, and Albert Sidney Johnston (see here). But I'm sure it has been more widespread. The lexilink of Morgan-Fayette grows more understood, more powerful, more synchromystic.]

===

Staying with fires here, June 2015 was a month of self-immolations and attempts at fire suicides.

June 1, 2015 - Shahjahanpur, India-based freelance journalist Jagendra Singh was allegedly set on fire on June 1 during a police raid at his house at Awas Vikas colony in Sadar Bazar area of Shahjananupr. He died during treatment at a hospital in Lucknow on June 8. He was doing a series of articles exposing illegal mining operations and land-grabbing. Source.

June 4, 2015 - In Austin, Texas, Andrew Guerrero, 57, using his lighter, set himself on fire in his car, at a gasoline station. Austin Police officers pulled him free, and he is at a burn center. It is uncertain if he will survive. Source.

June 10, 2015 - In central London, UK, a man attempted to self-immolate outside BBC Broadcasting House. He doused himself in petrol, but was prevented from igniting himself. Source.

June 27, 2015 - The media circulated a year-old story of the self-immolation on June 23, 2014, of 79-year-old retired Methodist minister, Charles Moore, who drove his car to a local strip mall, exited the vehicle, doused himself in gasoline, and set himself on fire. His suicide note explained that the self-immolation was an attempt to die a martyr for the black and LGBT communities. Source.

June 30, 2015 - In Japan, on a bullet train, a self-immolation of a suicide victim resulted in two deaths, as another person at the back of the car died from smoke inhalation. The man, identified as Haruo Hayashizaki, a 71-year-old resident of Suginami Ward, Tokyo, was near the entrance doors at the front of the Nozomi 225′s lead car when he poured a flammable liquid from a white plastic tank over his head and set it alight. The woman, identified as Yoshiko Kuwahara, 52, of Yokohama, was found at the opposite end of the first car. She reportedly died of carbon monoxide poisoning. The Nozomi express, operated by Central Japan Railway Co. (JR Tokai), was heading from Tokyo to Shin-Osaka Station. It was between Shin-Yokohama and Odawara stations when a passenger in car No. 1 activated the emergency alarm at around 11:30 a.m., and the driver brought the train to a halt. Source.

Will there be more fire suicides? Certainly. Will those be in the USA? Probably not as many as in Japan and India, this summer and fall.

===

Okay, the conspiracy literature is sharing one list we should not ignore. Alternative medicine doctors are dying.

There is a hint showing up in sites such as the Steamshovel Press and The Natural Blaze Newsletter that "alternative medicine" doctors are turning up mysteriously dead.

On June 19, 2015, controversial autism researcher Jeff Bradstreet, M.D. was found dead. He died of a gunshot wound to his chest, and then allegedly threw himself in a river. Some questioned the claim of suicide. Bradstreet was known as an anti-vaccine advocate. Bradstreet's son is autistic, which Bradstreet attributed to a vaccination his son was given at age 15 months.

James Jeffrey "Jeff" Bradstreet (born July 6, 1954), was an American doctor, an alternative medicine practitioner, and a former Christian preacher who ran the International Child Development Resource Center in Melbourne, Florida, a medical practice in Buford, Georgia and in Arizona, where he practiced homeopathy. Bradstreet's body (allegedly deceased from a self-inflicted gun shot to the chest) was found in the Broad River in Chimney Rock, Rutherford County, North Carolina, in June 2015, after his Buford, Georgia, medical office was raided by the Food and Drug Administration. At the time of his death, he lived in Braselton, Georgia and ran his medical practice in Buford.

On June 21, 2015, Father's Day, Bruce Hedendal, Ph. D. was found dead in his car. No accident. No running motor. He was merely, in his car. A father of six, Dr. Hedendal was at the forefront of chiropractic and functional medicine, high performance nutrition, fitness training and natural hormone therapies. Since 1985, he he has hosted syndicated radio and internet health programs, and had been currently hosting the longest running radio and internet show “Health is Wealth Live.” Like Bradstreet, Hedendal had been in conflict with federal authorities over his "alternative" view of medicine. A "pillar of health," his death is unexplained.

On June 29, 2015, a popular Estero, Florida "alternative medicine" Dr. Teresa Ann Sievers, 46, was killed. The death has left locals, family, and law enforcement authorities puzzled. Lee County Sheriff's Office authorities went on Monday, June 29, at 9:45 a.m. to Sievers' address at 27034 Jarvis Road in Bonita Springs, Florida, after she didn’t arrive at work.

“We don’t know anything but that she was murdered,” said Sievers’ sister, Annie Lisa, 52. She said Sievers, her husband and children had come to Connecticut for a gathering and her sister flew home alone Sunday. Source.

====

We cannot ignore the shark attack mania, either.

There have been a high number of shark attacks during the summer of 2015. The number is large enough for sharks to become a media story. Last time this happened? In which sharks became a media focus? Right before 9/11.

Could 2015 being a "Summer of the Shark" be a cosmic precursor to another 9/11 on 7/4 (which, after all, = 11)?
 



















The synchromystic world started talking about the "shark imagery" back in February 2015.







In 2015, on the Sunday after July 4th, it becomes "Shark Week" on cable television. Few remember that during 2001, the "Summer of the Shark" began on the 4th of July.

Shark attacks generally get more attention by the media than most news. Except for mass shootings, school shootings, workplace violence, and terrorist attacks.

Time Magazine in 2001 acknowledged it was “The Summer of the Shark,” even though statistically, there were less attacks than in some other years.

But there was something more sinister waiting in the wings - 9/11, of course. First, however, another animal got the headlines; the "Summer of the Gator" happened.

In my twilight language book, The Copycat Effect: How the Media and Popular Culture Trigger the Mayhem in Tomorrow's Headlines (NY: Simon and Schuster, 2004), I noted the unfolding of the "if it bleeds, it leads" focus on shark and alligator attacks. The media, almost completely, forgot about animal encounters after the Twin Towers came down. Terrorism and war were the new wall-to-wall coverage for months.

+++

Breaking news: After I posted the above about alligator attacks in 2001, J. M. sent me this ~ 

There was an alligator fatality early Friday morning, July 3, 2015. Tommie Woodward, 28, suffered severe trauma to a limb when he was attacked early Friday morning at the private marina, which is along a bayou extending from the Sabine River near the Louisiana line, Orange, Texas, police Captain Robert Enmon reported. The alligator was estimated to be 11 feet long.


The owners of the marina recently had spotted a large alligator on a few occasions, and put up a sign warning people to stay out of the water, police said. Woodward reportedly when told this, yelled out "F*ck the 'gators," and jumped in.
According to the Beaumont Enterprise, the incident was the first fatal attack by an alligator in Texas in about 200 years.


Now word comes from the director of Southern Fried Bigfoot that a violent encounter with an alligator occurred before the fatal incident at Orange, Texas. West of there, 75 miles away, at Charlotte Lake, Cedar Hill Park, Wallisville, Texas, a 13-year-old boy, Kaleb, was swimming near the shore when bitten in the arm and leg by an alligator. The gator also began to pull him under the water. Kaleb's father, James Hurley, jumped in the water, kicked the alligator off his son, and pulled Kaleb to safety. Both Kaleb and James Hurley are recovering at the hospital. Source.

More news: July 4, 2015. An 8-foot alligator grabbed Mike Karris' 11-year-old dachshund, Cody, at the boat ramp in the St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge in Florida, on Saturday. Karris and his girlfriend were unable to rescue their dog. The last attack on a dog was more than 15 years ago. Source.

+++

Now we are back to the sharks. And alligators! What does it mean? Another 9/11. Does Homeland Security, the FBI, and ISIS read the same literature?

====

So let me step back. I'm a Fortean. I have a worldview that looks at events as holistically as possible. The past informs the future.

Charles Fort once wrote of a world sense I share, "My liveliest interest is not so much in things, as in relations of things. I have spent much time thinking about the alleged pseudo-relations that are called coincidences. What if some of them should not be coincidence?"




Decades ago, one of the first science fiction novels to be inspired by Charles Fort was Eric Frank Russell's Sinister Barrier, published in 1939; revised in 1948.

I reminded myself, as I compiled the lists of lists above, that the events of Sinister Barrier took place in 2015.

As one modern reviewer of Sinister Barrier noted, "Many pages of the novel record lists of suggestive 'Fortean phenomena' culled from 1938 newspapers (the year of composition)."

And critiqued that Russell's "world of 2015 is still one in which vacuum tubes and switchboards co-exist with gyrocars and pneumatic levitators; aggression by the Asian Combine simply echoes World War II."

But there are remarkable intrigues, as well. Russell talked about vision-screens above telephones, understood modern forensics, and looked beyond the news of his day - into ours.

Considering the time frame in Sinister Barrier moves from 2014, through 2015, there is even a name game that startled me. It only appears once, but it stands out.

Russell writes of an investigation of a mystery incident, and adds,
A siren wailed along the road outside, died away dismally at the open door. Four police officers entered accompanied by one man in plain clothes. Quietly, without comment, they took out the uniformed corpse, came back for the fallen scientist. He was mouthing noiselessly as they bore him away.
Three of the officers got into the car, drove off. The fourth took his seat at the teletype. The man in plain clothes went up to Laurie.
“I'm Ferguson, the replacement.” ~ Sinister Barrier, Eric Frank Russell, 1939

On August 9, 2014, an 18-year-old African-American man, Michael Brown, was fatally shot by Darren Wilson, a policeman with the Ferguson (Missouri) Police Department. That one event in 2014 definitely was the foundation of events between law enforcement officers and African-American victims in 2015.

Russell even gives dates of events in 2015:
Halfway to the door he emitted a brief gasp, stumbled, fell. His stricken hand clutched the calendar from his desk, dragged it down to the carpet. He sobbed, hugged hands to his heart, lay still. The spark which had motivated him became extinguished. The calendar's top leaf fluttered in a queer, inexplicable breeze from nowhere. The date was May the seventeenth, 2015. ~ Sinister Barrier, Eric Frank Russell, 1939
So, what happened this year on May 17th? Did you forget already?

On May 17, 2015, nine people were killed and 18 injured, some by law enforcement and others in gunfire exchanges, in a shootout between rival biker gangs in Waco, Texas.

(Exactly a month later, on June 17, 2015, another nine people were killed in a church in Charleston, South Carolina.)

On May 17, 2015, NYPD officers responded to a 911 call in Briarwood, Queens around 4:00 a.m. There, they found Chinx and another victim in a car at Queens Boulevard and 84th Drive. The other victim was identified as Antar Alziadi. Chinx was transported to Jamaica Medical Center in Jamaica, Queens with gunshot wounds to his torso, where he was pronounced dead, at age 31. Using the stage name Chinx (formerly Chinx Drugz), the American rapper Lionel Pickens (born December 4, 1983) was from Queens, New York.

Another date that the Fortean writer Eric Frank Russell mentions is June 9th:
It was three o'clock in the morning of June the ninth, 2015, and the seldom mentioned but superbly efficient United States Department of Propaganda was working overtime. Its two huge floors in Home Affairs Building were dark, deserted, but half a mile away, hidden in a two-acre basement comprising a dozen great cellars, slaved the department's complete staff augmented by eighty willing helpers. ~ Sinister Barrier, Eric Frank Russell, 1939

So...

On June 9, 2015, the Southern Front of the Free Syrian Army claimed it captured a major Syrian Army base known as Brigade 52 in Daraa Governorate.

On June 9, 2015, Robert Alan Diaz, born September 17, 1975, died of unknown causes. He was known by his stage name Pumpkinhead or P.H., was an American rapper and hip hop artist. He grew up in the Park Slope area of Brooklyn, New York with his mother and younger sister.

Who knows if it means anything, but the main investigator of Sinister Barrier was obsessed with gathering all matter of material oozing with mystery. He was surrounded with a growing body of strange deaths, even before he understood them.
Bill Graham knew nothing about these earlier tragedies, but he knew about Mayo. He was right on the spot when it happened.
He was strolling along West Fourteenth, New York, when for no particular reason he cast a casual glance up the sheer side of the Martin Building, saw a human figure falling past the twelfth floor. ~ Sinister Barrier, Eric Frank Russell
What Russell's hero Graham began to note were "rumors of war, preparations for war, accusations of preparations for war, actual wars, ferocious and bloody; religious revivals, religious riots; financial crises; labor troubles; color rivalries; ideological demonstrations; specious propaganda; murders, massacres, so-called natural disasters, or slaughter in any emotion-arousing form; revolutions and more wars."

Many suicide victims turn up. Mystery deaths of scientists occur.

Russell understood the copycat effect in 1939:
“The first suicide began them,” Wohl declared. “The rest were imitative.” He handed back the list. “Take a look over police files sometime. You'll find time after time when murder and suicide were temporarily contagious. One spectacular and well-publicised crime often induces several others of similar type.” ~ Sinister Barrier, Eric Frank Russell

A significant city is destroyed.
Silver City was gone; the area it once had occupied was now an enormous scar on the face of Idaho, a five-miles-wide wound dotted with wreckage through which crept, crawled and limped a pathetically small number of survivors. ~ Sinister Barrier, Eric Frank Russell
The precursors of suicides and mystery deaths painted the canvas that would highlight the future - one of war. Piccadilly, London, was "messed with the blood of forty suicides."



The red dawn is there. Then come the attacks on Seattle, Vancouver, and San Francisco. Madrid is destroyed by an atomic bomb.
An azure sky splashed with pink by the rising sun spewed two thousand thin streamers of flame from the invisibility of its upper reaches. The streamers curved downward, whitening with condensation. Thickening as they lost altitude, they resolved themselves into mighty back-blasts of strange, yellow stratosphere planes.

Below lay Seattle, a few early citizens on its broad streets, a few wispy columns of smoke rising from stoked furnaces. Many amazed eyes turned to the sky, many still-sleeping heads tossed on their pillows as the aerial armada howled across Puget Sound, swooped over Seattle's roofs.

The bulleting rush brought the howl up in pitch to a shrill scream as the yellow horde rocketed over the rooftops, the badge of a flaming sun showing on the underside of each stubby wing. Black, ominous objects excreted in pairs and waggled downward from sleek, streamlined fuselages, fell for a hushed age, buried themselves in the buildings beneath. The buildings promptly disrupted in a mad, swirling melee of flame, fumes, bricks and splintered timbers.

For six hellish minutes Seattle shuddered and shook to an uninterrupted series of tremendous explosions. Then, like wraiths from the void, the yellow two thousand vanished into the stratosphere whence they had come.

Four hours later, while Seattle's streets still sparkled with shards of glass and her living still moaned amid the ruins, the invaders reappeared. Vancouver suffered this time. A dive, six minutes of inferno, then away. Slowly, lackadaisically, their condensing blast-streaks dissipated in the upper regions, while beneath lay pitted avenues, strewn business blocks, crushed homes around which wandered silent, thin-lipped men, sobbing women, screaming children, some whole, some not. Here and there a voice shrieked and shrieked and shrieked like one of the damned doing his damnedest in a world of the damned. Here and there a sharp report brought quietness and peace to someone urgently in need of both. A little lead pill was welcome medicine to the partly disemboweled.

It was coincidentally with that evening's similar and equally effective attack on San Francisco that the United States government officially identified the aggressors. The markings on the attackers' machines should have been sufficient indication, but this evidence had seemed too unreasonable to credit. Besides, officialdom had not forgotten the days when it had been considered expedient to strike blows under any flag but one's own.

Nevertheless, it was true. The enemy was the Asian Combine, with whom the United States was supposed to be on friendliest terms. ~ Sinister Barrier, Eric Frank Russell




Will there be a terrorist attack on the 4th of July in 2015? No one knows. Someone seems to think so. And CNN and Fox News will cover it live.





Wednesday, September 17, 2014

Crocodile Suicides, Alligator Attacks, and 9/11






On the afternoon after September 11, 2014, a woman from Bangkok died by suicide when she jumped into a crocodile pit at Samut Prakan Crocodile Farm. She had carefully removed her shoes before jumping into the water below. The "taking off and neatly placing shoes" behavior has been observed frequently by suicidal individuals jumping from bridges and buildings.

Crocodile Pit Suicides







This Bangkok pit contains hundreds of adult crocodiles, and the Samut Prakarn Crocodile Farm and Zoo houses a reported 100,000 crocodilians. Wanpen Inyai, the 65-year-old depressed woman from Thailand's Min Buri district, reportedly knew what she was doing, as much as anyone who dies by suicide can.


"A similar incident allegedly took place in September 2012, when a man lodged a complaint with the Crime Suppression Division after his wife went missing. He suspected she jumped into a crocodile pond because she had planned to visit the farm before she disappeared. That case is still a mystery as the crocodile farm has declined to comment," reported the Bangkok Post.

Ms. Wanpen's "death mirrored that of a woman who killed herself in 2002 the same way at the same farm, and another suicide reportedly took place a decade before that," said the BBC.

There, it turns out, have been several suicides by crocodile.

The 2002 story broke on August 11, 2002.

The Indian Express published an account on September 6, 2012, in which the 36-year-old wife of Sunai Jisathra, was seen by workers at this same crocodile farm to have "jumped intentionally" into the crocodile pit. Source.

Weird Universe lists the following compilation of crocodile suicides, with sources:

1990: A woman climbed the fence at the same crocodile farm, Samut Prakarn, and was swarmed by crocs as hundreds of tourists watched in horror. [LA Times]
1994: Following the death of President Felix Houphouet-Boigny of the Ivory Coast, a man declared that without the president life wasn't worth living and jumped into the crocodile-infested moat outside the presidential palace in Yamoussoukro. Crowds watched for two days as the crocs chewed on his body. [Glasgow Herald]
2002: Again at Thailand's Samut Prakarn croc farm, a depressed woman waded into the crocodile pit. A spectator later said, "The moment the crocodile grabbed her body, she even hugged onto him. It was horrifying." [The Nation]
2011: A South-African farm worker, depressed after a fight with his lover, waded into the crocodile-infested Lepelle river. No one saw him actually being eaten, but someone later reported seeing a human leg dangling out of a crocodile's mouth. [Daily Mail]

There could be many more.

Crocodilians include crocodiles, alligators, and in total, 23 different species. There is only one place in the USA to see all 23 known species - St. Augustine Alligator Farm Zoological Park.

While extremely rare, near fatal interactions with American crocodiles (Crocodylus acutus) do occur. American crocodiles are dangerous to humans; attacks in Mexico, Costa Rica, and Panama are not unprecedented. In May 2007, two instances occurred within one week of children being attacked and killed by this species—one in Mexico just south of Puerto Vallarta and one in Costa Rica. Even this year, on August 24, 2014, a man and his female companion were swimming in a canal in Gables by the Sea, a community in Coral Gables, Florida, when they were bitten in the shoulder and the hand by an American crocodile.



"Summer of the Gator" - 2001



Youth with trident personifying a thriving new country spears an American alligator on the Washington Monument in Eakins Oval; photographed near the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Cable television has institutionalized "Shark Week," in which programming and documentaries take the "fear factor" within humans regarding sharks and translate it to the small screen. Of course, it all goes back, during our modern era, to Jaws, for before the successful movie Steven Spielberg made in 1975, there was Peter Benchley's 1974 book Jaws.

They seem to have not discovered "Croc Week," or "Gator Week," per se, yet.

Beginning in 1976, when the first records in Florida started, fatal alligator attacks have been on the increase. Some occur in the late summer and early fall. For example, on September 28, 1977, George Leonard, 52, was killed by an alligator while swimming in the Peace River Canal, Charlotte County, Florida. On September 10, 1978, Philip Rastrelli, 14, was killed by an alligator while swimming across the Hidden River Canal of Bessie Creek, Martin County, Florida.

But still, shark attacks generally get more attention by the media.

There seemed to be so many shark attacks on humans right after the turn of the century that Time declared, in the Northern Hemisphere, at least, that 2001 was experiencing “The Summer of the Shark.”

But there was something more sinister waiting in the wings. First, however, the "Summer of the Gator" was about to happen.

In my earlier twilight language book, The Copycat Effect: How the Media and Popular Culture Trigger the Mayhem in Tomorrow's Headlines (NY: Simon and Schuster, 2004), I noted:
The summer of 2001 began quietly enough, with local newspapers in Florida talking about some deathly events, which before it was over, had everyone wondering if every lagoon in the Sunshine State was crawling with human-eating alligators. At first, the stories were only of local interest. On May 4, 2001, an 8-foot alligator in a Venice pond killed Samuel Wetmore, 70, near his home in Sarasota County, Florida. On June 23, 2001, little Alexandria Murphy, 2, wandered from her Winter Haven back yard, then was dragged into Lake Cannon in Polk County, Florida, by a 6 1/2-foot gator and killed.

Then all hell broke loose, with the media engaging in epidemic reporting, taking up the thread of 'gator and crocs as the next big new threat on the horizon. Alligators were popping up everywhere. By the end of that month, I had accounts crossing my desk of out-of-place caimans, alligators, and crocodiles being seen and caught in downstate New Hampshire (a 2.5 ft caiman), Central Park New York City (a 2 ft caiman), and on the same day, June 27, 2001, from Buffalo, New York (a 4 ft alligator caught) and off an island in the middle of the Rhine River, Germany (a 5 ft “crocodile” sighted but not caught).

The alligator attacks concentrated in Florida, however. On Sunday, July 1, 2001, a human arm that “appeared to have been bitten” off by an alligator, was found in a canal west of Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The rest of the body could not be found. A sort of high sad comedy was reached when the Florida papers published this kind of remark from a member of the Broward County Sheriff’s Department: “We're sure if they survived and they're missing a right arm, they would have come forward by now. Detectives have no idea what happened with this body part, whether it was some sort of accident and the person was eaten by an alligator and this is what's left.”

During the next week in July, echoes of the Florida ‘gators were heard in the Midwest again. Authorities were reporting the sightings of three alligators near Andrews, Indiana, in the Wabash River close to the Highway 105 bridge. No one was hurt but armed officers were trying to locate the critters.

Back in Florida, Tammy Woehle, 22, was out walking her dog, Lady, before dark, on Big Talbot Island, near Jacksonville, when an 8-foot-long alligator attacked her, according to a report from July 9, 2001. The gator grabbed and ripped part of the muscle out her leg, and pulled her to the ground. The news accounts almost made you feel the gator was a sneaky bastard because it crept up to her as she stood on a sandy beach, away from the water’s edge and away from high grass. She escaped with a six-inch wound on her thigh. Before the attack, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission had held a news conference to calm the public. They had noted that the seven alligator attacks in Florida in 2001 were slightly below average. Talk about bad public relations timing. The media would have nothing to do with it. The Woehle attack was widely reported, and it was clear to the public, from what they were hearing in the press, this was a dangerous summer. Then drumbeats announced that a much more sinister danger was lurking just offshore.
A few pages later, I wrote:

Ellen Steele, 81, heard the screams of her 81-year-old husband Robert on September 11, 2001, and couldn’t do anything to save him. But most people never heard about Robert, and how an 11-foot-long alligator near Sanibel, Florida, fatally attacked him as he walked his dog that day. There was something much larger on the media horizon that day. On September 11, 2001, four jet airliners, with Flight 11 being the first, were involved in the largest single homicidal-suicidal effort in history to bring bloodshed, death, and terror to the core of American society.

The Southeastern Outdoors Florida fatal alligator attacks site gives Mr. Steele a different age:
Sanibel, Florida – September 11th 2001, 82 year old Robert Steele was attacked and killed while walking his dog on a trail between two wetland areas in the J.N. “Ding” Darling National Wildlife Refuge. FWC officers later killed a 10’9″ and 6′ alligator.

The State of Florida’s “Alligator Attacks – Fatal” sheet has this:
Robert Steele, 82, was attacked near his house on Rabbit Road in Sanibel on September 11, 2001. Steele was walking his terrier on a narrow path that ran between two wetland areas close to JM “Ding Darling” National Wildlife Refuge when a 10’9″ gator attacked him and dragged him into the water severing his leg. FWC officers destroyed the gator. Another six-foot alligator was also removed.
Robert Steele is no longer a forgotten deaths of 9/11.