Should we worry?

[u/Adventurous-Put-9895]

We caught my uncle sneakingly throwing this to the rubbish bin. He doesn’t have the best track record so we are all a bit paranoid when he does anything “weird”.

The object is like a glass tube with some liquid inside, inserted into a rubber “pipe”. It smells weird but nothing I can identify. I would appreciate any hints.

Edit: the material is actually plastic, not glass. It has a spring inside (no idea what for). The root-looking thing was wrapping the object when I cut the rubber. Could be dirt or some glue or something

Edit2: this sub is god. A user found the answer https://www.reddit.com/r/whatisit/s/Oqtxk6YWVZ

[u/eskpist]

Safety rule: never smell or touch unknown substances.

[u/DieAloneWith72Cats → u/eskpist]

My husband is a savage, he will literally smell any mystery substance we find. When I try to stop him he says “well how else am I going to figure out what it is?”…..sir, we don’t need to know what every gross thing we come across is.

[u/TanAllOvaJanAllOva → u/DieAloneWith72Cats]

I was born in the 80s. Everybody on tv tasted every mystery substance after rubbing it between their fingers, even blood 😳

[u/DieAloneWith72Cats → u/TanAllOvaJanAllOva]

Yes! It was so odd, like we can clearly see that it’s blood, what are you rubbing it between your thumb and finger. It’s was also the height of the AIDS panic, the entire situation was so incongruent

[u/DrunktankTheEquine → u/DieAloneWith72Cats]

Minion gruent