Giant killer tomatoes invade the countryside. Vegetables tend to be benign, rarely if ever attacking people who handle or eat them. Even an uncooked vegetable will offer no resistance. Try that with a cow and you may get stomped to death. Instead of being openly aggressive, vegetables have evolved to adopt a subtle mode of attack that affords them some measure of revenge against their predators: team work. By pairing up with tiny bacteria, they can bring down dozens, sometimes hundreds, of potential enemies.
In Canada, carrot juice has forged an alliance with a renegade group of Clostridium botulinum. The latter, angry at the exploitation of its numbers by the cosmetic surgery industry, agreed to lie in ambush in perfectly innocent-looking bottles of carrot juice. The operation took down at least two unsuspecting members of the planet's dominant species. Not a huge number, but this is only the beginning.
Recently in the United States, contaminated spinach caused massive panic, and people are still frightened by the sight of greens in supermarkets. Even baby greens strike fear in the hearts of shoppers, something that has strengthened the resolve of the vegetable hordes.
The latest episode of this war of terror comes from tomatoes. And as most of you know, tomatoes are rabidly aggressive. In 2004, they formed an axis of evil with terrorist salmonella strains and infiltrated Sheetz. This led to at least 400 cases of infection in nine states. And now, they're baaaaaaaack! The latest guerilla attack is apparently over, but we know the war is not. And more vegetables may join the cause. Loyal reader and professional stair-surfer Leslie made ENN (Our Silos Overflow with Vegetables of Terror) aware of the fact that turnips may have a role in causing goiter. Our research team has found this to be true of kale and cabbage as well.
The moral of of all of this is: don't mess with the environment. When you're mean to Mama, Mama's mean to you. And she's much more powerful.
Got marinara? Email the paisans at ENN at eza_news @ yahoo.com
