Ectoplasm Alert!

[Qwertygirl]

Ok, so its not quite ectoplasm, but its really weird.

 

I live in south east London in the UK, in a vaguely surburban area and on a steep hill. There's a very strange phenomenon occurring outside my house, all my neighbours, family and friends have commented on it, yet no one has any answers. Maybe someone on this site can help...

 

A couple of months ago an ‘ectoplasm’ - thick, viscous jelly-like yet clear slime started to ooze up from between the pavement cracks. It occurs in about 6 or 7 places over an area of about 8 square metres. Each patch of slime is between 3cm and 10cm in diameter. Even after heavy rain has washed the majority of it away, it soon returns. The slime doesn’t smell but it is sticky if you are unfortunate enough to step in it.

 

I took a closer look down the little holes/cracks and I could see what looks like a greeny yellow slug skin. There is no movement, but that’s definitely what it looks like. The slime is nothing like the thin silvery trails you sometimes see and which I assume are from snails. This is SERIOUS SLIME. Gooey, slidey and odd.

 

Is it slugs? If it is slugs, what are they doing living under paving slabs? How do they eat or move around? Is the slime something to do with breeding or the slugs being in ‘season’? I really need some answers – I called the council and the guy just proclaimed it ‘well weird’, shook his head and drove off!

 

Thanks in advance for your advice

[ecoli]

It's obvious to me that you have aliens living in the cracks between your streets.

[MulderMan]

time to get the proton packs out

[zyncod]

It sounds like a slime mold - my old roomate had one in an aquarium. They're very weird - plants/algae that can move around.

[ecoli]

time to get the proton packs out

 

Who ya gonna call to fix this problem???

[Halucigenia]

My best guess is that it's a slime mould. I have never seen an occurance myself, but have seen pictures on TV. Seriously wierd stuff, under certain conditions the stuff can group together like a giant amoeba and the whole thing can move. here's the wiki page, not good pictures but good info.Slime Moulds

You might find some images close to what you have seen on the BioImages website, it's dificult to navigate unless you know what you are looking for.

Here's a link to the slime moulds pages BioImages Slime Moulds

 

If you have a picture you could post it here on this forum.

[Qwertygirl]

Thanks for all the input…

 

Who’d have thought slime mould could be so beautiful?! Amazing pics/closeups. The ‘in situ’ images were the most useful for my purpose but I couldn’t see anything that looked like what’s outside my house… I thought the maggoty looking white one might be it, but it doesn't develop into a clear liquidy goo…unless the goo’s a by product of spore activity that isn’t photographed/on the site(?) I dunno. Slime mould is the best theory yet though.

 

If you’re standing at my front door, looking down towards the pavement, it looks like a spidery yet blobby, flat splat of raw egg white, quite liquidy and shiny.… In it’s centre is the pavement crack/hole (as in the goo looks as if it’s coming up from under the pavement). If you kneel down and look closely, in the bottom/centre of it is a greeny yellow slimy, more solid thing that looks exactly like part of a scaly slug body, but now may indeed not be…. Mmm, the plot thickens.

 

A photo will help. I’ll take one tomorrow, in the daylight. Not sure if I’ll be able to get a clear/magnified enough shot of cenral-sluggy bit, but I’ll give it a go. Depends on clouds/light too. Not very familiar with digi camera/downloading pics yet, do I have to save the pic in a particular size or format (jpegs and all that?)for it to go on the Net? Or will I plug the camera in and will it kinda work/be obvious? It can’t be that difficult (!?), will try tomorrow, tired. If any handy hints come to mind in the meantime….

 

Thanks.

 

Cool signatures by the way : )

[Glider]

oops, posting twice, bloody technology...

Sorted for ya.

[Qwertygirl]

Don't know if upload has worked. If so pic 1 is next to my foot so you can see size of it... pic 2 the closest shot I could get of another patch. It's greener than I remembered/mentioned last night.

 

Thanks

 

Cheers for sorting my extra post out Gilder.

[Qwertygirl]

They haven't uploaded, help please!

[Qwertygirl]

I tried to upload a third pic, but its saying I've exceeded my upload attachment limit... yet when I click on 'My attachments' it's showing as empty. What's going on???

 

Thanks

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

You need to scroll down to the bottom of the Reply To Thread screen (not quick reply) and hit Manage Attachments, then choose the one you need. You can also go to your UserCP to change/delete them.

[Qwertygirl]

Thanks for the advice but that's what I did last time (went thru Additional Options', yet only the text 'Ectoplasm!.jpg' etc appeared in my post, not the actual images. Whn I try and upload I now get an 'Upload Error' message saying 'Exceeds quota by 440.2KB, and the green bar/line is showing as full..... yet 'Sum of attachments owned by Qwertygirl' is 0 bytes.

 

I went into CP and everything is set on default settings.... I made sure that 'Show Images' was ticked on in the Thread Display Options.

 

I give up. The mystery of the ectoplasm has now become the mystery of how to upload a picture to this site!

 

I can send photos by email so I don't think there's anything wrong with my computer.

 

:mad:Grrrrr

[Dak]

how large is the ectoplasm!.jpg file?

 

P.S., i always have trouble with attachments myself. stoopid attachments

[Qwertygirl]

Hey,

It's 1.4MB...

[Dak]

apparently, the max attachment size is 976.6 kb, hence why it wont work

 

hmm... try this:

 

• open ectoplasm!.jpg up in MS paint
  
• go to file > 'save as...'
  
• click on the box next to 'save as type', and select 'gif'
  
• click save
  
• see if ectoplasm!.gif will upload (gifs are generally smaller than jpgs)
  

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

Alternately, go to imageshack.us and upload it there. Then link to it from here.

[Qwertygirl]

Tried saving it as a gif in MS Paint , but this site's still coming up with an upload error saying Ectoplasm!.GIF exceeds my quota by 213.9KB

 

The imageshack site is a great idea , but you can only submit photos under 1MB.

 

Basically I don't know how to reduce the capacity of my photos. When I saved Ectolplasm! as a GIF, TIFF etc instead of a JPG, the memory used actually GOES UP, (eg to 1.4MB to 1.8MB)! The same happened when I reduced the pixels. I don't understand it, I thought GIF/TIFFs took up less space (????)

 

Yours frustratedly,

 

Qwerty

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

Try png. That should be far better.

 

Alternately, how big is this image? Perhaps you could use Paint to cut out the important part and leave out the rest of the image.

[Qwertygirl]

OK, I hope its worked....

[Qwertygirl]

Yay! I know how to do it now! Thanks for everyone's help. I think I've got space for one more pic... will try and get better close up/pics of another one tomorrow.

[Dak]

that huge cream-coloured space is being included in the size of the picture, btw

 

try and clip it down like cap'n suggested.

[Qwertygirl]

I tried to 'select all' then drag in the corner to reduce pixels, but for some reason it didn't work v well. I'll try again later. S'posed to be packing up all my stuff to move house... procrastination being my middle name...

My landlord's getting the council to 'treat' the pavement so I guess if they kill whatever's there I'll never find out what it is.

[insane_alien]

nice foot

[Qwertygirl]

Thanks, all the better for unpeeling bananas with...