-
22:55 Kenyan CopyCats Lurking Everywhere….
» Kenyanentrepreneur.com So, after “discovering” this site called mavuno.com, I couldn’t help but notice that it looks eerily similar to Mamamikes.com. The concept (using the internet to enable Kenyans in the diaspora to send goods to their relatives at home) is definitely the same (and I’m sure the founders of Mavuno copied it from MamaMikes — I’m making [...]
-
21:50
Hell's Fury, the Jeff Koinange story
» Kenya Imagine Collins Mbalo on former CNN African bureau chief.
Read more here.As was the case with US President Bill Clinton, Jeff Koinange and many more should serve as a reminder to the married class. Sweet as it may be, forbidden fruit remains just that -forbidden!
-
The Nairobi Star
» Kenya Imagine Berly Ogolla on the gutter press, and on the Nairobi Star, a recently released glamor magazine in Nairobi.
Read more here.In the end, what is delivered is a cross between a leaflet for a raffle (there is a plasma screen to be won), the National Enquirer and a 32-page edition of Rupert Murdoch's the Sun. The success of the paper will hinge on the ability of Quarco and his group to bring KISS's brash in your face and controversial style to newsprint, a moulding of the respectability that money allows it to pretend to have, with the talent for throwing mud that the gutter press has buffed to a glint.
-
18:48
july 4th, and the unheralded kenyan chicken
» Learning to play 
so this was the week of july the 4th. we got wednesday off at work and spent most of monday doing community service at this school in harlem. the story there is pretty interesting, the long and short of it is that a friend and i ended up painting desks in the wrong school and get blasted by yet another overly krunk new yorker, allot of these people here need to take a chill pill. its not like i would go and just start doing home improvements (or is it school improvemnts) in some random school. she was acting like repainting defaced desks was the crime of the century.
anyway seeing as two of my work days were unceremoniously taken away, i now have 3 day to finish 5 days work, I aint compaliniing though. went to coney island jana... it sucks... but the company was good so i had a good time. there was a hot dog eatting compe there (which i missed do to oversleeping... i had gone to bed at 4 on tuesday, another night on the town :). The winner though ate 66 hotdogs!!! in 12 minutes!!!! (correction, he didn't eat them, he swallowed them bila chewing i tell you). that stuff is dangerous! apparently is actually a recognized sport and they have a league and everything! its called M.L.E. Yeah you guessed it... Major League Eating :) only in america i tell you.
Oh, i was talking to an iteresting friend the other day and the converstation the otherday and somehow the converstion drifted into fast food and how much we miss kenyan fast food, stears (swoon), Nandos (double swoon), and the ultimate KENCHIC!! That kuku mfalme just has no compe on this planet! anyway it came to me that i haven't read any praise for kenchic and them and i figured i should just give a shout out to all those who know that there is only one kuku mfalme and its the king of all kukus on this planet.
-
11:58
The Day Mboya Was Shot At Lunchtime: What Has Changed In Kenya?
» You Missed This 
Annual Kumekucha Tribute To Tom Mboya
Exactly 38 years ago today (July 5th 1969), on a Saturday at lunch time a great Kenyan Thomas Joseph Odhiambo Mboya better know as Tom Mboya was gunned down outside a city chemist in broad daylight.
Today is a good day to reflect on where Kenya has gone since this still unsolved murder. I say unsolved because the man accussed of gunning him down went to the gallows (supossedly) still talking about being ordered to kill Mboya by a big man whose identity he never revealed.
Not only has Kenya gone backwards a long way from the day Mboya was elected to office as the first indegenous black African legislator in Nairobi by a mostly Kikuyu electrorate (he was Luo) but worse has happened. Today we hear it often said by the children of those Kikuyus who voted so enthusiastically for Mboya that some certain Luos are "unelectable" to the highest office in the land. I have often been accussed of favoring Luos in this blog (although recently I was accussed of being insensitive to them). The truth is that I am tribal but I ONLY recognize two "tribes" in Kenya, the Haves and the Have Nots. I greatly favor the latter voiceless tribe. I strongly believe that every political candidate should be judged based on their character and ability rather than from what part of Kenya they happen to come from.
Read about the emotions that run high on Saturday 12th July 1969 during the funeral
In the next few days we will carry a number of features in this blog to commemorate, as we always have since the inception of this blog, the anniversary of his death.
Why do I do it? Because I strongly believe that if Kenya has lost her soul (which I am convinced she has) then it all started that fateful afternoon when those two revolver shots rang out in Nairobi. And the truth is, we cannot face the future if we do not understand our past.
I warn the faint-hearted that this year I am little more upset than usual and I will not tone down any dosage of truth that has to be said and understood by all Kenyans. So it may be advisable for some of you not to read the Mboya tribute this year.
Those who are interested in learning the uncensored truth, please stay with me. I have a lot to say that nobody has dared to say before.
God save Kenya.
Other articles in this blog about Tom Mboya
The popular young politician who kept the wazees guessing
This man had something to do with Mboya's death
Mboya murder, JM's brutal Killing and the Standard Raid all have something in common -
My Story: Why Hard Work Will Not Take You Anywhere In Kenya
» You Missed This archive
One of the myths doing the rounds amongst Kenyans these days is that those who have not felt the dramatic economic growth under the Kibaki administration are simply lazy and that all a Kenyan has to do is work hard to make it in life.
In one ludicrous laughable example given in the comments area of this blog we are told that the reason why a Mr Onyango has not felt the impact of the economic growth is because they attend endless ODM rallies instead of working. That one really cracked my ribs. There is really no hope for some people in this country. This is NOT true.
Hard work will not automatically make you money in Kenya. The truth is that only the already rich and well connected can make money in Kenya. Corruption is also a great hindrance for the ordinary Kenyan in their quest to make an honest living and the government policies have not been formulated with the idea of creating opportunities for the common man. Rather they have often deliberately been formulated to frustrate small businesses and make things very difficult for them. This is the reason why Kenyans who have relocated elsewhere have ended up being very successful when they were a total failure locally.
The following personal story of what happened to me will illustrate this point better than a 1000 words of empty rhetoric.
I have always been very enterprising and have had a knack for coming up with brilliant ideas that turn an ordinary-looking idea into a very lucrative enterprise. After applying this talent to the businesses of others for a number of years, in the late 90s I opted to go it alone and I launched my own businesses. It was not the first time that I was going into business for myself and I felt that with all my previous experiences under my belt, I stood an excellent chance of being successful this time round.
My area of specialization has always been in publishing and I noted that the market was crying out for a tabloid-style entertainment newsletter that carried both human interest and political articles. But I also recognized that a major problem would be in the distribution of such a publication more than anything else. It is difficult to convince newspaper vendors to display a new publication prominently on their limited space on the newsstands where there are dozens of other publications crying out for attention. I purposed to create a totally new way of selling my new newsletter publication.
These were the early days of what Kenyans came to refer to as alternative press publications, but my publication, called Update, was different. The stories were well researched and well written and the quality of printing was a notch higher. And rather than use coloured newsprint like everybody else was at the time, I used white paper with an extra colour on the cover.
After several experiments and some serious research, I realized that the major hurdle that prevented most people from purchasing a publication was because they were not sure of what the contents were. What if I distributed a free miniature sample of the contents, I asked myself? I then carefully designed a small leaflet where I printed on both sides of the sheet detailed summaries of the articles contained in my publication. At the bottom I put the price.
All this time I was the reporter, editor, publisher and newsvendor all rolled into one. I was not scared of hard work and neither was I afraid of being laughed at. Incidentally I started out selling my publication at crowded public places, by this time I was being helped out by two young men. One day I met an old schoolmate on the bus who saw what I was doing and was totally disgusted. He mocked me and sarcastically asked what I thought I was doing. It was devastating because in our school days we were close friends with this guy, or so I thought. This friend of mine had a very comfortable job in a bank, a job that my entrepreneurial spirit could probably not hold down for too long.
To cut a long story short, after weeks of trial and error, everything suddenly clicked into place and I soon had a large team of vendors exclusively selling my newsletter in every corner of Nairobi. My daily profits climbed up to an average of about Kshs 60,000 per day-I kid you not.
People I knew and even strangers started warning me that I needed to be careful about the circulation department of a certain daily newspaper who felt that my alternative press publication was taking away daily sales from them. That is if a person purchased my publication, they were unlikely to purchase that daily newspaper. Alas I was naïve in those days, like many of the inexperienced readers in this blog who are too fast to dismiss things when they first hear them. I found these suggestions ridiculous and just ignored them. How could a large multi-million shilling daily newspaper get worried about the sales of some small upstart newsletter? That was totally absurd! It did not cross my mind at the time that I had not heard this thing from one person but from several people.
Very soon things started happening to confirm the warnings that I had already received. Firstly my vendors started having problems with City Council Askaris. Now traditionally there has always been a big difference between newspaper vending and hawking and the city bylaws recognize this fact. That is why we have newspaper vendors licensed to sell publications on the streets but we don't have hawkers licensed to sell their non-newspaper wares. Soon our licensed vendors were being arrested on strange trumped up charges like urinating at some street corner or being a public nuisance, and many other tramped up charges from the city by laws. The interesting thing was that the city Askaris were not targeting the vendors selling only the daily newspapers. They seemed exclusively interested only in my vendors.
I went to see the top officers in the city inspectorate at City Hall and they promised to put a stop to this harassment but nothing happened, nothing changed. So I quickly adjusted and learnt how to live with this and dismissed the whole thing as part of the corruption rampant with city council askaris. My policy was clear and known to all my vendors. It was that if they ever got arrested and locked in the police cells I would bail them out at my expense. They were instructed NOT to bribe (because a bribe would quickly get you off the notorious city council lorry long before you arrived at the police station).
I then set up a budget for bailing out my vendors and even employed somebody with some legal knowledge whose work was to do just that. They would then plead guilty in the city council courts and get fined Kshs 500/- the next day, which I quickly paid and they were back to work in a few hours. I factored the whole thing into my expenses. We were advised by a legal expert in these matters that pleading not guilty and waiting for due process would take ages, be too expensive and time consuming. And besides we had little chance of winning without bribing. To this day as a matter of principal I DO NOT BRIBE. Wacha iwe mbaya.
Somebody somewhere decided that they had to go further to stop us.
One day when I was not in, heavily armed plain clothes police officers from CID Nairobi area raided our offices and left with printing plates and a member of staff whom they used to track me down. The way the whole operation was carried out was as if they were arresting a very dangerous criminal.
Those were the days before cell phones but somehow word got to me about what had happened and I rushed to CID headquarters Nairobi where I was told to report the next day. I was very lucky not to have been locked up for the night. What saved me was that the CID officers and their boss had rushed off somewhere to deal with another more urgent matter and had left a message for me at their office.
When I arrived early the next morning, they asked me for my publishing registration certificate.
(To be continued tomorrow.) Read Part II NOW
Horror of Kenyan with female sex organ sharing cell with men at Kamiti Prison
Are you a Kenyan? Do You love your country? Join in this noble campaign to change things. Do something instead of just complaining.
Discover how the exciting new video web conferencing can make your business or web site much more profitable today. -
Kumekucha Readers Thanked
» You Missed This archive
Hi Chris,
Thanks so much for the support. Your readers truly made a huge difference. I have drafted a thank you letter.
See it below
Best regards
Kenn
Dear Kumekucha readers
How do I say thank you? My cup runneth over, filled with gratitude and appreciation.
The response to vote for my video during the IDEA fitness contest was overwhelming. I'm so moved by the support I received from readers of Kumekucha, it's beyond what words can say. The stories keep pouring in. Most asked their friends and families to help others even asked their grandma's who have access to computers to vote for me. From the bottom of my heart, I want to thank all of you for your support.
Because of your support I did very well and placed 2nd in the contest. I really could not have done it without you. We were the biggest surprise and gave everyone a run for their money. This is just the beginning and the exposure will be phenomenal. I'm very thrilled with the outcome. So what is next?
Your stunning outpouring has given me added encouragement to keep on keeping on. My plan is to produce some infomercials for 2008 (you might see me on the tube if you are up late at 2:00am) do some speaking and performing engagements and teleseminars
Once again thanks so much for your vote of confidence. It meant everything to me.
Best regards Kenn Kihiu
[www.danceXfitness.com] "Move Your Body, Move Your Life.."
Horror of Kenyan with female sex organ sharing cell with men at Kamiti Prison
Are you a Kenyan? Do You love your country? Join in this noble campaign to change things. Do something instead of just complaining.
Discover how the exciting new video web conferencing can make your business or web site much more profitable today.
-
11:01
KBW - 3 years old - The Year of Emergence
» Mentalacrobatics In the early morning hours of the 5th of July 2004 the Kenyan Blogs Webring was born. Today we are three years old. Happy birthday KBW! It seems like only yesterday that I was sitting down to write the post celebrating our second birthday. Time flies when you are having fun!
Thank you to all KBW members for making this one of the most vibrant online communities on the internet. As always it has been an amazing experience.
The Year of Emergence
Emerge: become known or apparent;
The emergence of Kenyans built for blogging
When I think back over the last 12 months what I notice is that this year has been a year of emergence for KBW and her members. If you will forgive the farmer in me for a moment, in our first two years we were finding our feet, exploring this blogging thing, figuring out if we wanted to do it or not, we were germinating.
The most frequent support question we would be asked in the Admin Team during the first two years was, “Why should I start a blog?” or “What is a blog?” or variations on that theme.
In the last year we mainly get asked, “I have a blog, how do I join the webring?” or “How do I get your aggregator to syndicate my content?” or variations on that theme. They “why” and “what” questions are decreasing, the “how” questions are increasing.
That is a good sign and KBW members have played a big role in convincing Kenyans to blog. These days when someone asks me why they should blog I simply point them to the KenyaUnlimited aggregator. I can almost guarantee you that they will read something that they either agree with whole heartedly or disagree with completely, that fuels an urge in them to get to a keyboard and start typing to contribute to the debate.
In this way we have emerged from within ourselves. Where else will you find a community composed of Maasai Market traders, IT geeks, undergraduates, pastors, self styled “sex therapists”, financial journalists, university professors, professional sports players, political commentators, rural farmers, many times many of these all rolled into one person?!!
Emergence within KBW - Internal
This is where we crunch the numbers.
- In our first year we signed up: 69 members – for a total of 69 members
- In our second year we signed up: 171 – for a total of 240 members
- In our third year we signed up: 293 members – for a total of 464 members
293 new members. Remember this is not a web forum where we have one central site where each member writes a sentence here or a sentence here. These are bloggers, generating new and unique content (in the most part) every single time they write. 293 new people giving us their unique insight on the issues they feel are important, in the way they want. You are effectively talking, in web 1.0 terms, of 293 new webmasters and web content editors joined together in a single community. Now those are numbers to be proud of. This has been achieved without a single penny spent on advertising; the only emails we send out as KBW are to bloggers who are already members.
However what is increasingly clear is that the majority of these new members had heard about KBW either through word of mouth, through reading a KBW member or simply by bumping into us online. Many start a blog so they can join KBW rather than joining KBW because they already had a blog.
If this rate of growth continues soon we will be signing up more than 400 bloggers a year, that is over a blog a day!
On the technical side, we have moved from an ordinary shared hosting account, to a more advance shared hosting account, to our own VPS, and soon to our own full fledged dedicate server.
KBW in the world - External emergence
This past year has also been marked by KBW and KBW bloggers being recognised outside our own community and emerging as leaders in some of the most interesting projects that use web 2.0 Here are some examples of this:
- KenyaUnlimited was Kenyan’s ambassador on Blog Day 2006.
- KenyaUnlimited was nominated as a Finalist in the 2006 Black Weblog Awards.
- At the Digital Indaba held at Rhodes University, South Africa KBW was frequently mentioned as an example of bloggers organising themselves into a online community.
- At the Global Voices Summit 2006 in Delhi, India, KBW was again highlighted as an example of how to organise a blogging community.
- At TED Global again the importance of the KBW to the African blogosphere was frequently mentioned and clear to see and on and on.
- Three dedicated women, KBW Admin members Mshairi and Kui led by KBW member Sokari are the forces behind the African Womens’ Bloggers website and webring.
- KBW members, lead by the indefatigable White African, together with JKE and Afromusing are pushing AfriGadget to amazing new heights.
- The most radical, innovating forces in ICT in Kenya a.k.a the geekosphere a.k.a Skunkworks-KE are active members of KBW.
- The Kenyan main stream media, while still feeling threatened by blogs (why??!!), are beginning to understand that ignoring us is a mistake, ironically the main stream media outside Kenya can not seem to get enough of Kenyan bloggers.
- ICT magazines within Kenya have started carrying regular blogging columns for example KBW member Al Kags’ regular column in ICT Village magazine.
I could go on for hours about this, The Year of Emergence.
Remembrance
As we shared good times, as mentioned above, in these past 12 months we have also shared some sad times, in August we learnt that Kachumbari author of Kenyan Villager had passed on. As the tribute to Kachumbari on KenyaUnlimited reads, “Gone for now but forever a member of the KBW family, Kachumbari’s presence shall be missed.”
The Kenyan blogging community through the Pamoja blog on KenyaUnlimited led the online tributes for the victims of Flight KQ507.
KBW in the community
Sylkwan has used her blog to mobilise resources for St. Francis Children’s home in Karen/Langata, Nairobi and JKE has done the same for The Nest children’s home in Limuru. In the past 12 months I have been lucky enough to visit both homes in the company of other KBW members and it is fantastic to see what positive change a few individuals can make when they decide to take a stand. The staff at St. Francis and The Nest are an example to us all.
Challenges
As many of you know KBW and KenyaUnlimited are run by a team of three volunteers. This year, in many ways, we have been victims of KBW’s success. As more and more bloggers sign up and join the webring we spend the vast majority of our KBW time dealing with support questions and various sign up queries. It is not unusual for KBW Admin Team members to spend 2 hours a day everyday of the week dealing with various support queries. Then take into consideration that the three of us have full time jobs, are located in three different countries and in three different timezones! While the primary task of the Admin Team is to provide this support and we enjoy it (in the most part) we have noticed that other KBW projects, especially those which are manpower heavy have suffered.
For example, last year it took a team of 6 of us to run the Kaybees. Towards the end of the process four of us basically gave two full days to counting and verifying the nominations and counting and verifying the final votes, sometimes roping in boyfriends and girlfriends to help with spreadsheets! LOL. The main, in fact the only, reason we have not held the Kaybees this year yet is because we understand immediately that we would be spread too thin with the team as it stands. This has also extended to other KBW projects such as Kenyan Bloggers’ Day.
In the past we have expanded the Admin Team by sending out invitations to one or two bloggers. This time we have decided to do something different and instead send out an invitation to all of you! We shall soon be advertising Admin Team positions on KenyaUnlimited. If you are a member of KBW and want to contribute back to the blogging community, want to get involved in some interesting and innovating projects, like helping people and are dedicated we would be grateful to hear from you. Watch this space and the Admin Team blog as we shall soon be putting up a profile of what we are looking for and what you can expect as a member of the Admin Team.
Finally
KBW members – thank you!
Non KBW Kenyan bloggers – join us!
KBW supporters - members or not, especially those from far and wide who are always ready to lend a hand, share advice and are constantly encouraging us, thank you. An extra big shout out to the Global Voices crew, from php and cron jobs code, to translations, to moral support we owe you big!Thanks
PS/ You would think that having had a year to prepare I would have started writing this post in good time instead of 2pm Nairobi time on the bleeding day eh! Any typos, missing links (no not that one), broken links please let me know!
© Mentalacrobatics for Mentalacrobatics, 2007. | Permalink | 12 comments
Add to del.icio.us
Search blogs linking this post with Technorati
Want more on these topics ? Browse the archive of posts filed under KBW.
-
8:54
By faith
» Kenyanpoet By faith
-
8:22
Quick hits
» Kenyan Pundit - Get your blog on at the Carnival for Africa Enterprising (deadline for submissions is tonight!). - New website called Sambazanow that allows you to send mobile phone airtime to your people in Kenya (apparently cheaper than Mama Mikes).
-
7:33
Timeout
» Memories, Sentiments, Rants and Raves 
I have a 4-day weekend ahead seeing that am not working tomorrow and Monday so as to attend to some matters. Despite the cold weather, the sun shineth once again.Errands aside i intend to catch up on sleep,bum and yes my mwendwa is home Yaay!
Have fun Lovely people and yes Blessings.
-
7:26
Reacting to red meat
» Farmgal I been thinking so hard trying to work out what am suddenly allergic to.
Last night I microwaved some chops I’d made on tuesday. Half an hour after dinner and farmgal is itching like a monkey. My skin looks like a freshly plucked chicken and my ears are red and hot!
I know I promised my summer will be pictorial but ai now way am taking pics looking the I do.Good thing is, I know what not to eat!
No more red meat for now. Kwanza am going to a wedding on sato and my dress is sleeveless…I need to think of an alternative asap!
-
4:42
How NOT to Earn $10,000/Month with Google Adsense.
» Bizmambo Here is an explanation why "expensive keyword" isn't equal to "profitable keyword"
Almost all AdSense publishers are looking for the most expensive keywords. Let's have a look at the top 100 most expensive keywords. But first let's add 2 extra columns to the list: clicks/day and cost/day by Google AdWords estimation:Have you noticed that keyword price result in ZERO profit if there are no clicks? It's cost/day (keyword price X clicks/day) that makes you rich, not keyword price itself.
Here is the list of the most PROFITABLE, not the most expensive AdSense keywords:
Keyword Cost Per Click Clicks/Day Cost/Day insurance $17.41 49,893.5 $868,645.81 hotels $3.52 200,636.0 $706,238.75 film $2.88 183,044.0 $527,166.75 home $3.89 102,282.5 $397,878.91 car $5.09 52,069.5 $265,033.75 schools $4.13 60,913.0 $251,570.69 acting $2.28 106,337.0 $242,448.36 credit $8.67 25,705.0 $222,862.34 cheap $2.71 82,139.5 $222,598.05 digital $1.70 130,607.0 $222,031.91 hotel $2.38 84,776.5 $201,768.06 film schools $5.64 35,501.5 $200,228.45 software $3.23 61,259.5 $197,868.19 new $2.17 90,415.0 $196,200.55 auto insurance $29.48 6,453.0 $190,234.44 rental $5.97 31,635.5 $188,863.94 free $1.06 172,680.5 $183,041.33 travel $5.02 35,084.5 $176,124.19 auto $7.28 23,610.5 $171,884.44 video $2.01 83,295.0 $167,422.95 mortgage $13.03 12,172.0 $158,601.16 flights $1.91 75,692.0 $144,571.72 editing $2.37 57,747.0 $136,860.39 refinance $20.01 6,827.0 $136,608.27 loans $9.38 13,966.5 $131,005.77 uk $1.43 86,623.5 $123,871.60 computer $3.67 33,043.5 $121,269.64 buy $2.06 58,840.5 $121,211.43 extended stay $20.13 5,758.0 $115,908.54 home insurance $18.75 6,152.0 $115,350.00 training $3.60 31,112.0 $112,003.20 travel insurance $11.29 9,861.0 $111,330.69 cars $3.90 26,198.5 $102,174.15 debt $9.17 11,104.5 $101,828.26 furniture $1.76 57,463.5 $101,135.76
-
2:53
10 Creatures You Didn't Know Were Poisonous
» My Africa Today 10 Creatures You Didn't Know Were PoisonousSomeone once said, "What you don't know can't hurt you." Here's an argument against that: It is good to know if something is poisonous before you approach it (or it approaches you). We unearthed 10 unlikely poisonous creatures in order to give you a better chance next time you head into the wild kingdom.
Articles marked with a (*) are available to those with access to MSN Encarta Premium. Learn more.
1. Hooded Pitohui: The hooded pitohui* of New Guinea is the only documented example of a poisonous bird (yes, a bird). In 1992 researchers discovered that the feathers and skin of the hooded pitohui contain a powerful neurotoxin called homobatrachotoxin, which causes numbness and tingling skin in people who touched the birds.2. Stonefish: The stonefish (which looks like--guess what?--a stone) is one of the most venomous vertebrates known. Its sharp dorsal spines contain enough poison to kill an adult human who is unfortunate enough to step on one.
3. Platypus: Will the oddness of this creature ever stop? Adult male platypuses have a poison gland in their hind legs. They can eject poison out of a hollow, horny spur on their ankle. 4. Browntail Moth: The browntail moth caterpillar is covered with white and brown hairs. The brown hairs are the ones you have to look out for: They are barbed and contain a poisonous substance, and are frequently carried by the wind after the caterpillars molt. These hairs can cause human respiratory problems and an irritating skin rash.
5. Centipede: One of a centipede's many pairs of legs have especially strong joints and end in a sharp claw into which a poison gland opens. These legs are used for seizing and killing prey. In some species, the bite is poisonous to humans.
6. Stingrays: Believe it or not, stingrays are the most common cause of severe fish stings. They have whip-like tails that have sharp, sometimes barbed spines at the base. Through the spines, they can inflict severe wounds, injecting venom from poison glands. Stingrays are bottom-dwellers usually found in warm, shallow waters, so watch where you walk in the water.
7. Salamander: Some salamanders have poison-secreting glands in their skin. The ones equipped with poison-producing skin glands are often brightly colored with conspicuous markings. This warns predators to stay away.
8. Shrew: Some species of the small, shy shrew have poisonous saliva that they use to immobilize their prey. Humans don't have to worry too much, however. These venomous shrews usually eat fish, frogs, small mice, and newts--not people.
9. Catfish: The dorsal and pectoral fins of many species of catfish are edged with poisonous spines. The spines are used for defense and can inflict severe wounds. This fish is no pussycat.
10. Poison Arrow Frog: OK, the name kind of gives it away, but the poison arrow frog is only one of several amphibious species that secrete toxins from glands in its skin. The poison arrow frog uses its poison to kill potential predators. Native people of Central and South America use the toxin to poison the tips of arrows.
Customize your mobile with your Complimentary Ringtone!
-
0:16
BEER PROBLEM?
» assidous This post landed in my inbox and since i found it humorous, i thought i would share it with my readers.
A man, sitting outside his home about to be evicted from his house,
was contemplating what the future would be
after he had divorced his wife,
lost his children and his job...
He notices a crate of beer bottles
and walks up to it.
He takes out an empty bottle,
smashing it into the concrete wall swearing,
"You are the reason I don' t have a wife",
second bottle, "You are the reason I don't have my children",
third bottle "You are the reason I lost my job".
He notices the fourth bottle is sealed and still full of beer.
He takes the bottle, puts it aside and says
"Stand aside my dear friend, I know you were not involved."