What’s with all those slimy, yucky pictures? That was precisely the question raised by thousands of twitter users after the Oregon State Police posted the bizarre and viral pictures. The pictures show a car covered bumper flooding with water and eels, some even spilling out onto the road.
OSP @OregonDOT & @LincolnCountySO on scene overturned #Slime #Eel truck Hwy101 MP131 closed. #Cleanup on Aisle 101 pic.twitter.com/Z9s9XbQ247
— Oregon State Police (@ORStatePolice) July 13, 2017
For the first few hours after posting the pictures, the police department didn’t say a word on the incident and kept on posting more and more intriguing images of the horror show.
WHAT HAPPENED HERE?
It looks like the eels burned their way out of the car ? pic.twitter.com/QR9wmI6N74
— Brian (@pdx_mavs) July 13, 2017
Oregon’s fire department also posted videos of the “eels” slithering around on the road.
Thanks @OregonDOT pic.twitter.com/SmwHtWLeQ3
— Depoe Bay Fire Dist. (@DepoeBayFire) July 13, 2017
What to tell the #drycleaner? pic.twitter.com/2QyxSriiGq
— Oregon State Police (@ORStatePolice) July 13, 2017
In this heat… what is this going to start smelling like in the next few days?? pic.twitter.com/3FqSwXeSMP
— Oregon State Police (@ORStatePolice) July 13, 2017
After hours of teasing and taunting posts, the Oregon State Police finally decided that they have had enough fun and published an explanation in a post on their website titled “Slime Eel Crash on Highway 101“.
The story goes something like this,
“The Mitsubishi truck (seen at some distance from the slime-covered cars in the photos) was transferring 7,500 pounds of hagfish, known as “slime eels”, despite not actually being eels, up the highway. When the vehicle was flagged to stop by a traffic cop, the driver, Salvatore Tragale, attempted to stop. Unfortunately, the transfer of weight caused one of the containers to come loose, and slide onto the road and tip over. The other containers soon followed suit, and separated from the bed of the truck, spilling onto the highway.”
https://twitter.com/m_estes/status/885604571287920641?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.iflscience.com%2Fplants-and-animals%2Fthese-images-of-a-slime-eel-incident-on-highway-101-have-gone-viral%2F
More like the scene in Men in Black where the woman gives birth to an alien squid
— ?Love'sTheAnswer? (@MystifyingMynx) July 14, 2017
The post adds,
“When one of the loose containers struck the Nissan car (covered in hagfish in the photographs above), it caused a pile-up of cars behind it. The cars were covered in eels, with the Nissan at the front, driven by Kim Randall, 64, the unlucky recipient of the most fish.”
Hagfish have a tendency to release mucus when stressed, which can be seen as the slime in the photos and the video captured by a witness.
Hagfish slime forms mucus when seawater reacts with two different ingredients in eels’ slime glands: mucin vesicles, creating a net of mucus strands and threads rich in a fiber called an intermediate filament. These are 100 times thinner than a strand of human hair but 10 times stronger than nylon, so they are used in a multitude of application like protective clothing to bungee cords.
But for now, cleaning it up was the only thing that concerned the authorities!
Did you witness this messy show? Share with us in the comments section below