Thieves struck a museum in Cape Town, South Africa over the weekend, making off with two very impressive 19th-century rhinoceros horns from a mammal exhibit. It’s believed they plan to send them to the Far East, where powdered rhino horn is considered to be a highly efficacious aphrodisiac. It fetches very high prices indeed: a prime rhino horn is literally worth its weight in gold.
In this case, however, there’s a catch. According to a museum spokesman:
“Before the mid-twentieth century, taxidermy mounts were prepared by being soaked in arsenic and preserved from insect infestation through regular applications of DDT, both highly toxic poisons that retain their toxicity over time.”
Hmm. Let’s see now. Wealthy Oriental gentleman swallows his nightly ration of pick-me-up (or should that be “pick-IT-up”?), only to consume a lethal dose of arsenic and DDT as well.
One could call it an in-sex-ticide, I suppose. This might be the most effective method of coitus terminally interruptus ever invented!
(And if the ghosts of the rhinos concerned can view events from the Happy Hunting Grounds, I daresay they’ll be in hysterics!)
Peter
Oh happy, happy thought…… 🙂
Is there a category for Inadvertent Darwin Award?
LittleRed1
That’s just too funny!
The arsenic is a larger threat than the DDT.
DDT has an extremely low toxicity to humans because it is an organochloride designed as an insecticide. The human analog would be organophosphates.
In WWII we literally doused people in DDT as a delousing agent with no recorded ill effects.