April 26, 2009
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Mystery Blob
It was lolling around near the bottom of a half-full jug of water yesterday. It appeared to be a discrete blob, until I agitated it a bit too much and watched it spawn several little blobs before coalescing again.
It was a rusty reddish brown in color. As I gently tilted the translucent white jug and peered down through the mouth of it at the blob sloshing back and forth, I thought of amoebae I’ve watched through microscopes. Too big to be an amoeba and not self-propelled, it was amorphous, more or less globular, with its color having a grainy quality, not uniform.
In the evening, as Doug was preparing to heat water and wash dishes, I started describing the blob in the white water jug. Not particularly interested in the fine points of my observations, he cut to the chase: “You want me to dump it?” Thinking both of water conservation and scientific curiosity, I replied:
“I want you to pour the water through a strainer into Kermit.” (“Kermit” is a big green enamel pot that, except when it’s moved to the kitchen stove to boil for dishwater, normally resides on top of the wood stove, providing heated water [lukewarm to boiling hot, depending on the intensity of the fire] all winter. It was named early in our tenancy here because we three were having difficulty settling on whether to call it the “hot water pot,” “stew pot on the woodstove,” “big green thing,” etc.) My plan was to get a closer look at the blob in the strainer without wasting a couple of gallons of water. Any microbial growth would be boiled to death before Doug started washing dishes.
His jingly jangly preparations to wash dishes proceeded across the room, over my left shoulder, as I went on playing in Facebook Fairyland. Then, I heard a surprised, “Hmph?!” Doug said, “Well, whatever it is, it’s in Kermit now.” The blob went right through the fine mesh of a tea strainer, not even leaving any visible residue behind. *sigh*
…and today’s Doonesbury turns the focus from Alice and Elmont, back to the budding romance between Alex and Toggle.
Comments (7)
Alien Life Forms.
Alf. You SAID it was … reddish, eh? If starts to grow fur and your cats start disappearing, it is indeed Alf.
@BlueCollarGoddess - That would resolve the issue of what to do about the latest 2 litters of kittens and the one that’s impending.
Alf, lol.
As good a guess as any, I suppose.
When I saw your post title, I thought you were going to be writing about the giant space blob astronomers are trying to figure out. It’s from the deepest part of space and is one of the oldest formations in the Universe (long gone probably but its about 13 billion light years away so that’s how old it is when we are viewing it). Maybe you got a little piece of it stashed away in Kermit.
if you can’t trap it in a strainer, can you catch it in something like a coffee filter.
otherwise, in order to make full use of the water, leave it on the woodstove in a smaller pot till it evaporates…then see what’s left in the bottom. this water is from the spring you get your drinking water from, be concerned. some scallywag may be dumping ‘who knows what’ somewhere in the neighbourhood and it’s making its way through the water table in to your glass.
oil would float would it not?
Glad to see you’re still alive and (seemingly) kickin’. I don’t go on Xanga too much anymore, and when I do it’s mostly to read the thoughts of others – the comments oftentimes prove themselves more valuable to me than the entries. I’ve even stumbled across yours on occasion.
These days my time is occupied with EFTPOS whoredom and pushing metal cages up hills. Anyway, I came on here and saw that you’d found a 6 month old comment of mine. That it took you so long to find it is a good sign, I suppose.
The blob’s ability to get through a tea strainer kinda surprises me, in spite of the fact that I’ve never actually observed its properties first-hand.
@the_nthian - That thought that oil would float was the first thing that occurred to me. This was heavy enough to stay near the bottom of the jug, but not so much heavier than the water that it just sat there on the bottom. It was the color of iron oxide, and there’s a lot of iron in our water. I’m accustomed to having rust settle out of the water onto the bottoms of pitchers, jugs, etc. This is the first rust-blob I’ve seen It is gone now, boiled and used for dishwashing. The spring’s source is a deep, ancient aquifer, fossil water, but there’s always a possibility that some ground water got in around the “improvements” the highway department has done to the spring. State DEC tests the water periodically and posts the results. Nothing unusual has shown up, and no waterborne disease in the neighborhood, as far as I know.
@Apocatastasis - I certainly didn’t expect it to slip through the strainer. If I ever see another one, I’ll use a paper filter.