How To Gross Out/Freak Out Chicagoist

By Margaret Lyons in News on Oct 19, 2004 5:52PM

• Answer the question we were too skeeved to ask: what do you do with a dead elephant? "Tatima [the 35-year-old elephant] will be disposed of as 'medical waste' via incineration," according to the Sun-Times. Geaahh. Poor Tatima died Saturday after a battle with tuberculosis, which, who knew, elephants can totally get. Tatima, and two other female African elephants at the Lincoln Park Zoo, came to Chicago from the San Diego Zoo in spring 2003. Some animal rights activists tried to get Tatima et. al. moved to an elephant sanctuary in Tennessee, and claim that living conditions at the zoo contributed to her disease and eventual death. For some reason, the Sun-Times puts in the lede that Gillian Anderson wrote a letter supporting the move. Gillian Anderson? Yeah, we bet she has time to write lots of letters now that her career is dead. Whatever. RIP, Tatima.

• Grow your eyelash out to record lengths. Eeee. U of C fourth-year Mel Grubbe has one super-long eyelash that goes down past her nose. While there's nothing explicitly disgusting or wrong about that, it's kind of giving us the creeps. Grubbe hasn't done anything in particular to cultivate the special lash, but she's hoping to get it certified by the Guinness Book of World Records. Good luck, Mel!

• Tell us about radioactivity alarms at garbage dumps. Did everyone else know about these? That garbage gets tested for radioactivity? We had no idea. A garbage truck carrying machines that "X-ray building structures," or used to until they became garbage, set off a level 1 Hazmat response yesterday. If pressed, perhaps we would have guessed that garbage was routinely screened for hazardous materials, but probably not.