When fall arrives and leaves start changing color, Mike Valladao, a systems engineer at a cybersecurity company, slips into his alter ego, “Farmer Mike,” also known as the “Picasso of Pumpkin Carvers.” Farmer Mike has been chiseling whimsical faces and comical creatures into big pumpkins for more than four decades. Wearing his trademark orange overalls … Read more
Viewers of Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” may be surprised by how many mythological creatures are packed into Homer’s ancient epic. Filled with A-list stars, the major box-office hit takes audiences from one mythical encounter to the next as Odysseus fights to make it home. “The movie is visually stunning. It needs to be seen in the theater,” … Read more
When Bimini Wright, a 38-year-old Brooklyn writer and performer, embarked on a routine subway ride back in September 2025, she did not expect to return home with a pigeon. Wright first found the then-squab, which she has since named Smidgen, “stumbling around” a subway platform off the Q line during a Monday morning rush hour. … Read more
Authorities in southeastern Spain were forced to temporarily shut down a popular stretch of sand earlier this week after two venomous sea creatures known as “blue dragons” were spotted. The town of Guardamar del Segura, located just north of Torrevieja on Spain’s Mediterranean Costa Blanca, implemented a swimming ban across all beaches after the rare … Read more
If you sea something, say something. Fishermen are being instructed to kill an invasive, predatory fish with the potential to devastate local ecosystems. The Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC) is warning folks to be on the lookout for the northern snakehead, a marine animal indigenous to Asia that has been spotted in US waters. As … Read more
Scientists have discovered a new genus and five new species of millipedes in the remote jungles of Tanzania in southeast Africa. The millipedes were discovered while researchers were studying tree and vine growth in the Udzungwa Mountains in Tanzania, according to the University of the Sunshine Coast in Australia. Among the forest litter and loose … Read more
Talk about a blue Christmas. Beachcombers in India were left flabbergasted after a flotilla of indigo-hued, super-rare and venomous sea creatures — most of them dead — flooded beaches near Chennai in the wake of a recent cyclone. “Hundreds of them had washed ashore,” Srivatsan Ramkumar of the Environmentalist Foundation of India told The News Minute. The cobalt-colored … Read more
You mite need to brace yourself for this one. There are small mites called Demodex that live on most people’s faces — and they mate in the nighttime. And a new horrifying video is showing and breaking down the ins and outs of these creepy, crawly creatures. A clip from the YouTube channel “Journey to … Read more