For many years the Vampire was one of the most terrifying,
and interesting of all the Halloween monsters. Long before a series
of chick flicks ruined the wicked reputation of the vampire.
The original Vampire was Count Dracula, a fictional character
in the 1897 Bram Stokers novel “Dracula” In this classic
work of fiction the chief antagonist was a Vampire who came to
England and seduced the beautiful maiden Lucy. The novel that
stoker wrote was much darker than the glossy chick flick vampire
movies that Hollywood produces today. And it made for much better
drama too.
Bram Stoker
Stoker was going to name his book simply “the undead”
and was going to use the name “Count Wampyr” for his
vampire. But after researching other books on vampires he came
across the name Dracula and took this name for his vampire, he
even liked it so much that he renamed the book “Dracula”.
The Real Count Dracula was the ruler of the small principality
of Wallachia in current day Romania. His real name was Vlad. But
after defeating several Muslim invading armies Vlad was given
the name of Dracula, which translated means the Dragon.
In his time around the mid 1400 he was infamous for using a heavy
hand to keep law and order. But at the time he was considered
a great ruler and even today he is considered to be a national
hero because he saved Christendom from the invading Muslims.
Vlad Dracula
Most of what we know of Count Dracula we get from written documents
that the Turks kept. They witnessed the cruelty at which their
defeated soldiers were given. Dracula would take his Muslim prisoners
and impale them on wooden poles. This would serve as a warning
to any Muslim army who might try to invade again.
Vlad Dracula was no vampire. And if he new how his names would
be known through history he might not be too happy about it. But
if he could choose which vampire to be, Bram Stokers vampire or
the new chick flick vampire “Twilight”. I bet he would
want to be a chick flick vampire.
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Pigzilla the monster Hog
Strange new catfish discovered
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) - Hogzilla is being made into a horror movie.
But the sequel may be even bigger: Meet Monster Pig. An 11-year-old
Alabama boy used a pistol to kill a wild hog his father says weighed
a staggering 1,051 pounds and measured 9-feet-4 from the tip of
its snout to the base of its tail. Think hams as big as car tires.
If the claims are accurate, Jamison Stone's trophy boar would
be bigger than Hogzilla, the famed wild hog that grew to seemingly
mythical proportions after being killed in south Georgia in 2004.
Hogzilla originally was thought to weigh 1,000 pounds and measure
12 feet in length. National Geographic experts who unearthed its
remains believe the animal actually weighed about 800 pounds and
was 8 feet long.
Regardless of the comparison, Jamison is reveling in the attention
over his pig, which has a Web site put up by his father—
http://www.monsterpig.com —that is generating Internet buzz.
"It feels really good," Jamison, of Pickensville, said
in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. "It's
a good accomplishment. I probably won't ever kill anything else
that big."
Jamison, who killed his first deer at age 5, was hunting with
father Mike Stone and two guides in east Alabama on May 3 when
he bagged Hogzilla II. He said he shot the huge animal eight times
with a .50- caliber revolver and chased it for three hours through
hilly woods before finishing it off with a point-blank shot.
Through it all there was the fear that the animal would turn
and charge them, as wild boars have a reputation of doing.
"I was a little bit scared, a little bit excited,"
said Jamison, who just finished the sixth grade on the honor roll
at Christian Heritage Academy, a small, private school.
His father said that, just to be extra safe, he and the guides
had high-powered rifles aimed and ready to fire in case the beast
with 5- inch tusks decided to charge.
With the pig finally dead in a creek bed on the 2,500-acre Lost
Creek Plantation, a commercial hunting preserve in Delta, trees
had to be cut down and a backhoe brought in to bring Jamison's
prize out of the woods.
It was hauled on a truck to the Clay County Farmers Exchange
in Lineville, where Jeff Kinder said they used his scale, which
was recently calibrated, to weigh the hog.
A new bizarre type of alien-like catfish has been discovered in
the Amazon rain forest. The picture above shows a strange armored,
wood-eating catfish feeding on a fallen tree in the Santa Ana
River in Peru.
According to National Geographic, “the so-called
suckermouth armored catfish species use their unique teeth to
scrape organic material from the surfaces of submerged wood. But
the new, as yet unnamed, species is among the dozen or so catfish
species known to actually ingest wood.” Regardless, the
wood-eating catfish have been known to only digest organic material—such
as algae, microscopic plants, animals, and other debris. Scientists
are mind-boggled with how this new type of catfish absorb woods
into its bodies. Many researcher think that the wood must contain
some kind of a super microbes that assist the fish with digesting
the wood.
