It's Not Ricin...It's Not Even Cobra Venom

After a weekend of frayed nerves and FBI Investigations, life is getting back to normal for UT students as investigators have established that the powdery substance found over on Thursday was not the deadly Ricin. UT freshman Kelly Heinbaugh was doing her laundry in the Moore-Hill residence hall when she found the powder in a roll of quarters. Early tests for Ricin were positive, and the FBI evacuated the dorm and inspected the laundry facilities. Further tests revealed that the substance was not Ricin nor was it harmful.

But it was still quite a weekend for Heinbaugh. After heading home for the weekend, news outlets from across the country, who were reporting the story as, "Deadly Powder found on University Campus!" camped outside Heinbaugh's house in an attempt to make us all hate the sensational news industry more do some investigative reporting.

Ricin is a lethal toxin that comes from the castor bean. Wikipedia says it is twice as deadly as cobra venom. We just kinda thought that was a funny descriptive simile. And we just love the sound of it...COBRA VENOM!

*Image (c) Gwen from Flickr*