Thursday, August 16, 2007

Double-nosed Andean Tiger Hound

Here's a good one!
"Explorer Colonel John Blashford-Snell has had close encounters with vampire bats and angry bees, but his latest brush has been with a rather odd dog. He spotted a rare breed of Double-Nosed Andean tiger hound, which has two noses, on a recent trip to Bolivia..."I was sober at the time, and then I remembered the story that the legendary explorer Colonel Percy Fawcett came back with in 1913 of seeing such strange dogs in the Amazon jungle. Nobody believed him, they laughed him out of court. [...] The Bolivian Army came and took DNA samples because they're interested in the breed. He's not the only dog like this, there are others in the area."
The Scientific Exploration Society was in Bolivia to investigate a shallow crater about five miles in width. According to Colonel Blashford-Snell, he has now found evidence that this was caused by a giant meteorite, which struck the Bolivian Amazon Basin up to 30,000 years ago. He says he has found evidence of human habitation within 50 miles of the blast zone, and believes these people were wiped out as a result of the meteor's impact. The explorers also carried with them a church organ from Dorset as a gift to local Bolivians in order to secure their help with finding the meteorite.
You can read the whole thing here. It's not just the dog, which is extraordinary. It's not just the bewitching sentence "I was sober at the time". It's that utterly glorious last sentence.

5 comments:

Neil said...

Sounds like a Herzog film waiting to happen. Anyone buy the "improved sense of smell" claim?

Heidi the Hick said...

I'd do lots if it meant getting a church organ out of the deal.

That dog has two noses, and my poor lil dog has only one...and no snout...

Xtin said...

There are so many treasures in there that I can't believe it. You couldn't make this stuff up. But on balance, I have decided that best of all is the name of our hero the explorer: Colonel Blashford-Snell.

Genius!

Heidi the Hick said...

And I love the new profile picture too, I gotta say!

Pluvialis said...

Cheers Heidi! It's a hat I bought for a wedding a while ago, and the sheer silliness of the hat and picture made me laugh so much I thought I'd resurrect it. One of my friends told me I resemble Death in it. Or maybe a race-goer on Ladies day at Ascot. Either way, the hat scares the hell out of the goshawk, so it's been banished from the front room.