Started with the healthy stuff, stayed the course until about the 4th beer, then started hitting the carb table every time I walked by. Final tally - 8-9 watery beers, 3 pieces of pizza, 5 (small) pieces of cake, half a cookie, some chocolate pretzels, maybe 8 small stuffed mushrooms, a big plate of teriyaki chicken and rice.
I brought the birthday cakes, and few people ate them as usually happens, so I felt the need to do my part or something and try one of each. And one extra piece of red velvet.
Livecam of corpse flower at the Huntington - gonna bloom any day now.
What the hell is a corpse flower?
Corpse flowers are known as the largest flowering plant in the world. It’s a tropical plant native to western Sumatra, Indonesia, with a life expectancy of 30—40 years. The “spadix” or log tube center can grow up to 15 feet in height, and the leaves grow to nearly 13 feet wide. The outside is green like any flower bulb, and the leaves (or petals) are generally dark red or burgundy. The massive flower is part of the araceae family and is related to smaller plants like philodendrons, calla lilies, and peace lilies. They are also in the same family as skunk cabbage (big surprise).
They bloom on average every seven to 10 years, and when it does bloom, it will only do so once that year. Once the flower opens, it emits a strong, pungent smell that’s said to resemble rotting meat, or “flesh” (hence, “corpse”). Lifehacker senior health editor Beth Skwarecki recalls the smell as having more of a “warm garbage” odor and compares the experience to “walking past a really ripe dumpster on a summer day.”
According to the planting site Treehugger, the plant’s scientific name, amorphophallus titanum, is ancient Greek which translates to “giant, misshapen phallus.”
Yeah they’re probably very well fed and as tame as crocs can get. They’re not trying to eat him just rightly annoyed that someone is stepping on them.
I wonder though how do they get the crocs to line up like that? Maybe they’ve trained them to do that for feeding time or something.
Also I was shocked that there are alligators so tame they’ll just lay there on an operating slab while you inspect them. I saw it in some documentary where they wanted to look at an alligator up close, and see how its limbs moved, to compare it to some extinct bones they found.
