Oddity Central

Meet the Incredible Jake Olson – A Completely Blind College Football Player
The Wild Parrots of Brooklyn – New York’s Cutest Immigrants
Artist Carves Animal Skulls into Intricate Works of Art

Meet the Incredible Jake Olson – A Completely Blind College Football Player

Posted: 25 Apr 2016 06:39 AM PDT

After years of cheering for his favorite college football team, University of Southern California student Jake Olson has achieved the impossible dream – despite being completely blind, he is now a part of the team, playing as long snapper for the USC Trojans, approaching the game based on feel rather than sight.

Posted: 25 Apr 2016 04:23 AM PDT

Among the brightest of Brooklyn's diverse inhabitants are Quaker parrots – tropical green birds with blue wing tips, measuring about 12 inches from beak to tail. Although they're native to the generally hot regions of central and southern Argentina, they've successfully managed to colonize the relatively colder New York borough over the past four to five decades.

No one knows exactly how these colonies of exotic birds came to live in the Big Apple, but as with all mysteries, there is a lot of speculation surrounding their existence. The most popular explanation has to do with an accident at JFK Airport, during which a number of birds escaped from broken shipping crates and ended up making a home for themselves in the city. Others believe the real answer to this mystery is much less dramatic, and actually has to do with clumsy bird owners. Quaker or Monk Parrots were very popular pets during the 70’s as they were very cooperative and easy to train, so it’s easy to assume that some of them escaped and founded the colonies that today exist all over New York – in Pelham Bay in the Bronx, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, in eastern Queens in Howard Beach, throughout Staten Island, and sometimes in Central Park.

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Posted: 25 Apr 2016 03:35 AM PDT

American artist Jason Borders uses a simple Dremel rotary tool to turn creepy animal skulls into intricate works of art that sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Born in Lexington, Kentucky, Borders always had an interest in bones and started collecting them at a very young age. "I always had a little cabinet of curiosities in my room, and in the garage," he says, but he didn’t start using them as a medium for his art until much later in his life. He always an artistic streak and used to take art classes at the Lexington Art League in his spare time. He later attended the Columbus College of Art and Design in Ohio, but only worked with traditional materials like clay and paper. That was until a few years ago when he discovered an elk carcass while driving through the desert.

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