Last one out of the Kinjaverse, turn out the lights.

Otters Oddities

Nailed it!

Oh! Sometimes I crack myself up!

C'mon! It was funny!

Aw....who cares what you think. It was funny, though.

Now, does that look like a kidney to anyone else? I think it looks kind of like a kidney.


Have you ever eaten a kidney? Not a human one, duh! But an animal kidney? I haven't. I don't eat offal. But I know some people do. The English and their kidney pies, comes to mind.

Personally, I don't see how people can eat offal. I know....It's just meat...blah blah blah. But things like Kidney, liver and heart....I just can't. Don't get me wrong, I do eat some organs. I like gizzards. I have no idea why. Maybe it's because the texture is closer to actual muscle meat, instead of goopy meat like a liver. And skin. Guilty pleasure! I will scarf fried chicken skin all day. And if you roast a chicken or turkey, the skin is mine! And chicharrones......the fresh ones....not the crap you get at 7/11.

A lot of people I know think eating skins and gizzards is about as gross as it gets. To each their own, I guess. I won't eat tripe or sweet breads either. Lingua, only if I'm starving. I don't mind the taste of lingua, it's just the thought of tasting something that can taste me back.

And brain? I rank that right up there with balls. You try serving me brains or balls and we're going to have a problem. Mainly a fight about who cleans up the hurl, and whether or not I pay to have the carpet cleaned. (In my defense, I have tried a bulls boys. And I'd much rather eat a can of Friskies that I serve my cats...)


But, enough of this prattle. It's time to move on to todays subject. And there isn't a single one of you who can guess what it is based on anything in this post so far, so don't even try. After all it's Friday, and that's not the day you want to be hurting yourself by thinking too hard.

Todays post hearkens back to a post I did a while ago. (no, I'm not searching through all my oddities posts to link it. There's a lot of them, and I'm lazy). It was a post about the Methuselah Tree.


*Quick Refresher*

The Methuselah Tree is the oldest living thing on the planet. It's a bristlecone pine that lives in California, and is about 5,000 years old.


Today's post is sort of like that. It involves a tree. An old tree. A record holding old tree.

It's called the Jaya Sri Maha Bodhi. That's not what kind of tree it is, that's just what people call it. It's a name.


The tree it's self is a Ficus religosa, or Sacred Fig, tree. It's a fairly common species of fig. This particular one, though, is a Bodhi Tree. That means it's a tree that is sacred to Buddhists. In fact, the Jaya Sri Maha Bodhi is just about as sacred as they get.

The Bodhi Tree, or Bo, started it's life as a regular old fig tree. And it would have lived it's life out as a simple fig tree had it not been for a man who was questioning life, the universe and it's meaning.


Siddhartha Gautama wanted to be a holy man. But to him, Hindi didn't make sense. Some Hindu holy men preached you should live life to the fullest. Others preached you live life with nothing. Literally, nothing. Not even clothes. Siddhartha didn't agree with either view.

So one day, he sat down under a fig tree to enjoy the shade and consider things. And he sat there for a long time. A very long time. And then, one day, it hit him. Moderation. To live a correct life, one must practice moderation. Living a life of excess was wrong, but denying yourself things was wrong as well. Life was about balance. Enlightenment had stuck!


And Siddhartha Gautama became Gautama Buddha. And that fig tree? People started calling it Sri Maha Bodhi. After he became enlightened and explained his revelations to his followers, Buddha stood for a week, staring at the Sri Mana Bodhi as a gesture of gratitude to the tree.

A temple was eventually built around that tree.

So, why isn't this post about Sri Maha Bodhi? Because, the Jaya Sri Maha Bodhi is specialer. Errr...more special? Whatever...


In 250 B.C.E., the wife of the ruling king became jealous of all the attention her husband gave Sri Maha Bodhi. So she had it killed. Or, so she thought. It barely survived and grew back. After King Ashoka dies in 232 B.C.E., his successor didn't revere the tree, or Buddha, as much. So in 228 B.C.E. Ashokas daughter took some clippings from the tree and sent them to other locations in an attempt to preserve Buddhas tree.

And that is how we come to Jaya Sri Maha Bodhi. It was one of those original cuttings. And it's still alive and well in Sri Lanka.


There are other Bodhi Trees, but none are original cuttings. There is one that was said to have been grown from a seed from the original tree, but that can't be verified. And the original tree is long gone. It was chopped down in 200 B.C.E and it's replacement in 600 C.E. In 1913, that one died of old age, and the current one was planted.

So, Jaya Sri Maha Bodhi has the honor of being the oldest known living descendant of Buddhas original tree.


And for those of you who prefer their oddities to be free of religion, let me phrase it like this:

The Sacred Fig at the Buddhist temple in Anurdhapura, Sri Lanka, is the oldest known flowering plant that was planted by human hands. There may be older ones, but none are documented like Jaya Sri Maha Bodhi.


Just can go see a tree that was planted by a human over 2,200 years ago.

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