Ripley's Believe It or Not by Ripley’s Believe It or Not! for September 28, 2018

Most power outages are caused by now DECEASED squirrels!

Viruses may not be alive, but they sure make a lot of people dead!

Jackie Robinson. Shouldn’t that read. The only player….

Squirrels, the Ludites of the animal world.

who are these “most” scientists?

Ripley’s failed to mention that in order for the squirrel to cause the outage, they wind up dead for doing it due to electrical shock.

“Alive” seems an inappropriate wording as this word is usually applied to lifeforms, which can be dead or alive. But viruses are not considered “dead”, they are considered being not a lifeform (by most scientists, but not alle of them). And the disagreement here is not one about facts, but about the definition of what should be called a lifeform.

Addendum: I don’t consider the above shown squirrel to be alive any more.

Supposedly viruses have changed our genome. Maybe they are just isolated pieces of DNA.

So making vaccines with ‘dead virus’ is an oxyoron??

Strange. About 10 to 20 percent of squirrels die in power outages.

One of my all time real heroes, Jackie Robinson. Thanks for that mention, John Graziano.

I don’t know about “most” scientists believing viruses are not alive. Part of the definition of “alive” is an organism being able to reproduce. Viruses, lacking DNA, cannot do this by themselves. They need a host cell with DNA to reproduce.

MLB has only retired one number, the MLB teams have retired many…

Our highways in New England are littered with squirrel carcasses this year. Too many to count in some places. My husband refers to it as murderer’s row. I’m calling it squirrelmageddon! I think being shocked might be a quicker death… I don’t even want to think about burning to death.

MMMMMM…Crispy Critters!

A virus cannot replicate without using another cell’s structure & nucleus to do so. Hence most scientist’s attitude that “It’s not alive”!

This is why I don’t brake for squirrels

I recall while growing up more problems were caused by squirrels than weather, vehicles, birds, people, trees, etc. The transformer was directly behind us. We buried many a squirrel among our dogs and other animals. The workman more than once mentioned solving the problem was harder with low voltage lines than with high voltage lines. Naturally the hardy little survivors feel safer using the high narrow, continuous pathways. My dad and I saw too many run over trying to cross streets and other roads. A major freeway and and major highway were nearby. From time to time we would park and watch them cross. Some didn’t make it. Lots of pine, various oak (acorn), nut trees, among other preferences were available across the intersection. Also fruit trees. Generally they would cross over in the morning and return in the evening, some after dark. Many a year I would notice fruit and nuts had been taken (often all of them). They had serious preference for plums (purple plums most of all).

Nice paragraph.