Free Republic

Lindsay Hasz and her husband were recently enjoying a rare evening without kids when they decided to dine at Issaquah's Montalcino Ristorante Italiano. Hasz ordered the frutti di mare, a traditional Italian medley of seafood and shellfish. Then she bit into something unexpected. "It was quite jarring," she said. "In fact, I thought I almost broke my tooth it was so hard." Inside the meat of a clam on her dish she found what looked like a pearl. "I thought maybe it was an earring from an employee in the kitchen and it fell into my dish," Hasz said. She...

British marine biologists have found what may be the oldest living animal — that is, until they killed it...

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 5:50 a.m. ET DARTMOUTH, Mass. (AP) -- The war on terror could have an unlikely ally in a modest mollusk known as the quahog. Researchers who injected the clams with enough botulism toxin to kill 1,000 people found the shellfish somehow neutralized the enzyme, which is considered a potential bioterror agent. ``Botulism activity was cut in half by the blood of the quahog,'' Dr. Bal Ram Singh told The Standard Times of New Bedford in Wednesday's editions. ``So we think there is some sort of antidote in this blood. If we are able to...