I seem to have misplaced my brains

OK, this is just a little too strange to ignore.

A while back, the University of Texas in Austin reported 100 brains have gone missing.

That's about half of the university's collection of brains that were preserved in jars of formaldehyde and used for a variety of studies.

This opens up a whole universe of questions from who took them to why did they take them?

Why would anyone want one brain in a jar let alone 100?

I know people like to collect things – I have several old tools mounted on the wall of my man cave – but I have never thought I needed a brain collection.

What would you do with them? Put them on the mantle? Perhaps on the coffee table as a conversation piece – a conversation that I hope would include the recommendation to interact with a mental health professional.

But wait, that is not all.

The university is home to some of the greatest minds alive today, and this is what one of those great minds had to say about it:

“We think somebody may have taken the brains, but we don't know at all for sure," psychology Professor Tim Schallert, co-curator of the collection said.

You think somebody may have taken the brains!

What do you mean, you think someone took the brains?

If no one took them, what the hell happened to them?

Did they some how come back to life and figure out how to get out on their own? If so, there are a lot of people in Ottawa who could use a method of bringing their brains to life.

Is this some weird horror movie coming to life: Night of the Bottled Brains, Attack of the Fermented Gray Matter, Charge of the Contained Craniums?

I am no detective, or a high-IQ professor type (or even a high IQ type in any capacity for that matter), but even I can figure out someone took the brains and I have never even been to Texas.

His co-curator, psychology Professor Lawrence Cormack suspected undergrad students may have liberated the brains from the facility for Halloween or other juvenile reasons.

Now that makes much more sense.

Of course, there is always the Frankenstein monster scenario where undergrads are regenerating their own creatures made of accumulated body parts and needed a brain to complete the set, but I highly doubt it.

Following an investigation, school officials determined it was youthful adventure by high-IQ, low common sense students who did it for a gag.

And yes, some of those students were displaying the brains in their dorm room as a conversation piece.

“Here at Ima Laimo Dummo, we not only have a great fraternity, we have an awesome collection of jarred brains.”

To prevent further cranial misadventures, the remaining 100 brains were being moved to a different location in the hopes they will not wander away like the others.

OK, so we solved the mystery if the missing brains, but I have one more question: why did it take so long to notice?

You have 200 brains – which is a lot of brains – and 100 go missing, don't you think someone would have noticed sooner.

You would think around the 50-brain mark, one of the high IQ types would have looked at the menagerie and thought, “Hmmm, our brain collection seems a little light. I better take a look.”

Instead, a full 100 brains had to go missing before someone noticed and sounded the alarm.

But, at least the case is closed and we don't have to worry about a bunch of brains running amok – especially in Ottawa.

Copyright 2016, Darren Handschuh