After a large limb fell from an oak tree near my house, I started to cut it up for firewood with a chainsaw. The thickest part of the limb was about 12" in diameter, and it was suspended a few feet off the ground by a multitude of branches. When I had cut about halfway through the limb, red liquid began gushing out of the wood onto my leg. I briefly thought I must have decapitated a raccoon hiding in a hollow spot. Then I realized the sheer volume of liquid - perhaps two gallons - could not have come from any animal that would fit inside the limb, and the liquid was quite cold. I noticed there were many dead carpenter ants in the liquid. I completed the cut and found that the limb had a large void filled with waterlogged carpenter ant frass (ant poop, wood dust, and body parts). Yuck.
I have a roughly 6"x6" Native American stone carving about 1" thick. It sat on a disc of artisan cast glass about 4" in diameter and 5/8" thick. Which in turn sits on a glass curio shelf about 5 feet above the ceramic tile floor.
One day mid afternoon we’re sitting nearby and hear a loud explosive crack and suddenly the sculpture is lying on its side on the shelf and half the disc is shattered into tiny tidbits and strewn all over the floor. The other half-disc is sitting there next to the tipped over carving. We have no pets or kids. The other equally tippy sculptures on the shelf are undisturbed. The sun can’t shine directly on that location. The room was air conditioned to the normal year-round temperature. As far as we know, the glass disc had never been dropped and had no visible cracks. Yet suddenly on a random quiet day in a closed room it chose to shatter itself. I found 1/2" chunks 15 feet away, so the break-up was forceful.
Neutrinos. I blame it on the neutrinos.
Same thing happened to my coworker… her glass table shattered one day after they left the outside door open. They did some informational research and determined it was probably due to thermal stresses caused by a temperature gradient in the glass.
I was in my backyard when I heard the familiar “rustle-rustle-thump” you hear when a piece of fruit drops from a fruit tree. Only we don’t have any fruit trees in the backyard, only in the front. I glanced over at the base of the tree and saw a dead bird. Not sure if it was in the tree and just keeled over, or fell from the sky through the tree branches.
Sleeping, maybe 2 am in the morning…
I am awakened by a loud sound. I gather my awareness and focus it on the source of the sound. What I hear sounds like something is scratching around in the bathtub in the bathroom 10 feet from the bed. My dog is up already, but instead of barking at whatever it is in the tub, he is wearing what I can only describe as a sheepish embarrassed expression on his face. I ask him, “WTF is that, buddy?” but the sheepish look on his face remains.
I had a .38 revolver in my bedstand, so grab it and cautiously enter the bathroom, fully expecting to see a raccoon or possum or something trying to climb out of the slippery tub…
I instead see that one of the glass sliding shower doors along the edge of the tub had completely shattered, and the nails-sliding-on-the-porcelain sound was actually little bits of glass sliding down from what was left of the door into the tub.
I quickly figured out that my dog, who often liked to lay in the thing (nice and cool esp. on hot summer nights), must have tried to get back out of the thing, and had somehow impacted a hard body part, perhaps a toenail, right at the correct shatter point (don’t most pieces of glass of that opaque sort have that one spot which will instantly shatter it even on a relatively light touch?), and was afraid I’d be pissed at him. I instead quickly comforted him, and, once my nerves were back in one piece, we went back to bed.
Eight years ago, I was sleeping in my apartment in Virginia and heard a rustling sound that woke me up. I turned on the light, and it was…a spider that had been trying to climb onto the bed. A spider strong enough to make the bedsheets rustle.
One night I was dead tired before bed, and ended up having a dream that I ate a giant marshmallow.
When I woke up the next morning my pillow was gone.
Aww. Tiny little isopods. You made my night!
So that is what you call them, roly polys.
I hate those things.
Then I don’t recommend watching Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind. Isopods the size of large buildings.
{Making a note of that.}
Or Raya and the Last Dragon, where the Disney Princess’s animal companion is basically a giant pillbug crossed with Totoro.
“How are you feeling?”
“A little down in the mouth.”
I laughed hysterically at this this.
I can’t top it but I’ll give it a shot. years ago when I was between jobs I drove a limo. I was an hour into a pickup for a wedding when the tire blew on the highway in 90 degree heat. I jacked up the vehicle and took the nuts off the wheel but it was welded to the hub by rust. To make matters worse I was so flustered that I forgot to put it in park so it starts forward and falls off the jack. The force of the car hitting the ground loosens the wheel. I put it in park, jacked it up again and finished the tire change.
A few years ago I was driving to pick my kids up from school. It was a nice sunny day around 2:30 in the afternoon. I was driving down a main street through a quiet rural area with lots of empty fields and not a lot of houses. The windows were closed, and I was listening to music. Traffic was light and there were no other cars near me. Suddenly there was a really loud BANG from the right! Loud enough that it really rattled me. I immediately assumed that something had hit my car. I actually expected a window had been blown out and was surprised when I looked around and that wasn’t the case. I pulled over to look for damage. There was nothing, not a scratch on the car. Tires were fine. There was nothing on the road. I looked around expecting to see smoke from an explosion. Nothing. Not a person to be seen. No other cars stopped.
To this day I have no idea what that bang was. I have absolutely no explanation.
I was once a passenger in a car when a bird flew right into the windshield, making a loud bang. There was no damage to the windshield and no mark left behind. The driver never even saw it.
This reminds me: I once sat quietly in my living room, watching TV, when suddenly I heard an immensely loud bang at the window. I first thought it must’ve been shattered, but it still was intact, but when I looked outside (my apartment is on ground level with my garden), I saw not one, but TWO big blackbirds lying on the grass, one on its side already dead, and the other on its back, still moving a bit but with an obviously broken neck. That one died a short time later. They must have been chasing each other so intensively that they both overlooked the window and smashed full force into it, at the same moment.
Lovely place, too bad we have to move. RIGHT NOW! 
I may have posted this before - can’t remember.
We live not far from a pretty busy road. By the side of the road is one of those sprawling shops that do a variety of things. You can buy fruit and flowers, or fireworks, or a burger, or get your car washed. And at one time it was a pet shop as well. In the summer they would hang the caged birds outside the shop by the vegetable stall.
Well, if you head north that busy road will take you to a major hospital, and so it’s fairly common to see ambulances tearing up and down it on emergency calls - you get used to having to pull to the side and let them past. One day, a few years ago, I was cycling along, just passing the aforementioned shop on my left, when an ambulance appeared with flashing blue lights - but no siren - and streaked past on my right. At exactly the moment it passed me, one of the caged birds did the ambulance siren noise perfectly (and surprisingly loudly). There was a moment when I had genuinely no idea what had happened - flashing lights to one side of me, siren to the other.
I guess enough ambulances go up and down the road for a mimic to learn the noise and associate it with the flashing lights. But jaysus did it freak me out.
j