Offbeat: More a bunny and less a bug…

Man’s best friend, man’s butt’s worst enemy

A US hunter was rushed to the hospital after being shot in the buttocks by his dog.

The 46-year-old man was hit after his “excited” pet stepped on a shotgun in his boat.

He escaped serious injury, receiving only minor wounds to his buttocks and probably a bigger one to his pride.

Police said the man had been duck hunting with a friend on the Great Salt Lake, Utah, when the bizarre accident happened.

The hunter, from Brigham City, was shot as he climbed out of the boat to move decoys in an area of shallow marsh.

Deputy chief sheriff Kevin Potter said: “The dog got excited, was jumping around inside the boat and then it jumped on the gun.”

“It went off, shooting the decoy setter in the buttocks. I don’t know if the safety device was on. It’s not impossible the dog could have taken it off safety.”

Mr Potter said the man was hit from about 10 feet away with 27 pellets of birdshot during the incident at the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge.

He wasn’t seriously injured, in part because he was wearing waders or thick, waterproof trousers.

The men called 911 and walked to a nearby main road to wait for emergency crews. The wounded hunter was then transported to a local hospital.

Source: orange.co.uk

Haircuts earn barber hot rides!

Ramesh Babu is a Bangalore-based barber who gives customers a haircut for a modest Rs100 but owns a Rolls Royce Ghost worth Rs 3 crore, and 67 other cars. “Somehow, things have clicked for me,” says Babu, whose clients include politicians, police officers and film stars such as Salman Khan, Aamir Khan and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan.

With a film on his life — expected to be released in three languages — in the pipeline, his Bollywood contacts may come in handy.

Babu was nine when his father died in 1979, leaving the family with nothing. To make ends meet, they rented out his father’s saloon on Brigade Road for a mere Rs5 per day. Forced to get a fulltime job, Babu dropped out of school after Class 10 and started working as a barber.

The career choice paid off better than he could have imagined. In 1991, he started his own salon, Inner Space, which gained popularity among the city’s trendy bunch. But the turnaround happened in 1994, when Babu purchased a humble Maruti Omni van and started renting it out.

Seventeen years later, his car collection is anything but humble. Apart from the Rolls Royce, his fleet includes four Mercedes, an equal number of BMWs and 50 Toyota Innovas — which he rents out. Renting the Rolls Royce for a day will set you back by Rs 50,000.

Source: hindustantimes.com

Hard on the heart—harder on the wallet

A heartbroken businessman spent £22,000(Rs3,057,348) on the world’s most expensive dessert to cheer himself up after he was dumped by his girlfriend.

Diamond merchant Carl Weininger, 60, splashed out on the extravagant pudding as a “pick-me-up” after she ended their three-year relationship.

The chocolate-laced pudding is styled like a Faberge egg and its list of ingredients included edible gold, champagne and caviar.

It contained a gold bracelet and spoon set and the cherry on top was a two-carat diamond.

Mr Weininger took the pudding to the Aviators’ Ball, at Heathrow’s Sofitel Hotel where lucky guests sampled the luxury dessert.

Each mouthful cost around £800(Rs111,176) and the whole dessert took just 15 minutes to devour.

“Buying the dessert was a real boost for my morale,” he said. “I was dumped earlier this year and felt this could be a decent pick-me-up.

“I’m not much of a chocolate lover myself but all the women who tasted it said ‘Wow’. It was absolutely delicious, as you would expect.”

Source: web.orange.co.uk

Monsters of the deep

Anglers may be known more for their imaginations than their catch, but Jeremy Wade is telling no fishy tale when he says he’s wrestled with monsters of the deep.

The extreme fishing fan has spent years tracking down some of the world’s most dangerous and bloodthirsty fish — and he has only just lived to tell the tale.

He has tangled with the sawfish, often described as a cross between a shark and a chainsaw, and the huge prehistoric alligator gar, which reaches up to 3 metres (10feet).

The author and TV presenter has trapped beasts, that include 2.4m (8ft) man-eating catfish, electric eels and super-piranhas.

Once he was hit in the chest by a 2m (6ft 6in) arapaima fish, scarring his heart.

Mr Wade has recorded his tales in a new book called River Monsters, ‘a tale of obsession, adventure and very big fish’.

“People generally have no idea how weird and also how large some of these things are,” he said. “Some look like something from the time of the dinosaurs.”

Source: metro.co.uk

A bunny that’s chicken!

Otto would make the perfect chicken, except for a few hiccups.

Hatching eggs, scratching around the coop and roosting on a beam with the rest of the hens are great habits for chickens, but rather unusual for an eight-month-old male rabbit.

The confused bunny came as a free gift to Ville Kuusinen’s home, when he bought nine Silkie hens and a rooster from a farm.

The Kuusinens and their three children live on a small island in Velkua some 210 kilometres (130 miles) northwest of Helsinki.

“When I went to the hen house, I noticed he was sitting on the eggs. Later I watched through the window how he jumped on the beam, failed, tried again and with a lot of practice eventually he stayed up there,” said Kuusinen.

Otto does not like to sit on laps or eat carrots like most pet rabbits. The rabbit, who has lived with chickens all his life, prefers chicken feed and runs with the chickens outdoors and sometimes plays with them by jumping over them.

“For the chickens he is one of them. He often sits on the beam between the hens and under their wings,” Kuusinen said.

But he said Otto’s rabbity instincts still take over when a visitor steps into the hen house. He runs away and hides, but can be lured out with raisin buns. Reuters

More a bunny and less a bug…

It looks a bit like an alien, but this carrot-eating weta has now been declared the world’s biggest insect.

This is a real life Bugs Bunny — a huge insect that eats carrots.

A former park ranger discovered the giant weta up a tree and his find has now been declared the world’s biggest insect.

Mark Moffett found the cricket-like creature, which weighs a staggering 71 grams, after two days of searching on a tiny island.

The big bug, with a wing span of over seven inches, is only found on Little Barrier Island in New Zealand.

Source: metro.co.uk

For it’s a jolly good log! 

The world’s longest ever Christmas cake — a 1kilometre-long vanilla flavoured log with a bitter chocolate cover — has been created by 80 cooks in China.

The cake, measuring exactly 1,068 metres (3,504 feet), was created at the Pudong Shangri-la Hote.

The busy chefs designed, baked and sweetened the cake across a period of seven days.

A staggering 904 organic eggs, 1045 kilograms (2,304 pounds) of flour, 209kg (461 pounds) of sugar, 401kg (884 pounds) of bitter chocolate and an impressive 34 kilograms (75 pounds) of Tahitian vanilla were all mixed together to create the one-of-a-kind dessert.

“We make the sponge, we bake and then, when it’s cooled down, we make our vanilla cream, which is inside, we roll it up, and we make our very secret recipe of chocolate frosting,” explained pastry chef Yusuf Yaran.

“We put it all over the cake, and then we have our candy decorations and some icing sugar on the top.”

The final presentation saw 150 staff put the finished touches to the cake, helping to place it out on 156 tables during an intense 24-hour period.

Initially, the team of cooks aimed to create a cake at a length of 888 metres (2,913 feet), but only upon the cake being measured did they realise the scale of their achievement.

After celebrating the success of the long cake, the hotel began to slice it to sell to the public, with all proceeds going to support chemotherapy treatment of four children in Shanghai.

The previous record holders for the world’s longest cake were the French with a 207 metre effort.

Source: metro.co.uk

Crash, bang, thud... £2m of scrap metal

Whoever heard of a car crash with a price tag that huge? Well..you have now!

A multiple car crash in Japan has created an estimated £2m(Rs277940812) of scrap metal.

Twelve of the 14 cars involved in the accident near Shimonoseki were supercars — including eight Ferraris, two Mercedes and a Lamborghini.

Reports suggest the crash happened after a Mercedes was driven on the wrong side of the road on the Chugoku expressway.

Japanese newspaper The Daily Yomiuri said 10 people were taken to the hospital with minor injuries.

The group of drivers was reportedly made up of self-employed “car enthusiasts”, who were travelling from Kyushu to Hiroshima.

Among the vehicles were two Ferrari F430s, two 360 Modenas, two F355s, a Lamborghini Diablo and a Nissan GTR.

Source: news.sky.com

Published in The Express Tribune, December 10^th, 2011.