Watercooler Stories

Snake surprise hit in Edinburgh eatery

EDINBURGH, Scotland, March 14 (UPI) - An Edinburgh restaurant that put snake on the menu to honor Chinese New Year has found an unexpected demand for the meat.

Shaws Bistro and International Tapas Bar serves its snake with pancakes on a bed of seaweed and roasted shallots.

"We're surprised how positive the reaction has been," owner Tony Marini told The Scotsman. "People even phone up in advance to check we'll have it in. It's been amazing."

The restaurant in Old Fishmarket Close near the famed Royal Mile is known for international tidbits like kangaroo filet and ostrich steak. Shaws now serves 50 portions of snake a week, Marini said, which is the equivalent of three whole snakes.

Exotic snakes disappear during shipping

SANTA CRUZ, Calif., March 14 (UPI) - Police in California are investigating an unusual theft -- exotic snakes that disappear after they are shipped from a Santa Cruz retailer.

A customer in Kansas got an empty box from Santa Cruz Reptiles instead of the expected super pastel ball python, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. The snake has a retail value of $7,000.

A Georgia customer expecting three female pythons worth $1,000 each was also disappointed.

"We'll be looking into how they were shipped and by whom," said Sgt. Fred Plageman of the Santa Cruz County Police. "I think this is somewhat unusual. But anything that has value is going to be stolen by thieves."

Plageman said that investigators are checking into everyone involved in the shipping process. He said the store has used United Parcel Service for a long time with no problems but recently tried using a store that provides shipping services.

Greek monk's body won't decompose

LAMIA, Greece, March 14 (UPI) -- Thousands of people have begun flocking to an Orthodox monastery in central Greece to view the body of a monk which has not decomposed after 15 years.

"From the start I believed that this is a sign of God," said Bishop Nikolaos from Lamia, in the prefecture of Fthiotida. "Even the monk's soft parts are intact."

Four doctors and an Athens coroner said they were unable to explain how the body of Vissarion Korkoliakos remains as it was the day he died at the Agathonos monastery, the Athens News Agency reported.

The bishop appealed for the faithful to be patient as the church sought answers.

"We are not rushing to make him a saint ... and are not calling on pilgrims to worship it," he said.

Babe the Blue Ox gets fed highway funding

BEMIDJI, Minn., March 14 (UPI) -- Babe, Paul Bunyan's blue ox companion, a concrete statue built in 1937 by the Bemidji, Minn., Rotary Club, will be getting $100,000 worth of repairs.

Bunyan and Babe have been featured twice in Life magazine. Kodak has said they're the second-most-photographed statues in the United States, right behind Mount Rushmore in South Dakota.

Babe developed a one-inch-wide crack from the neck to the hindquarters that city officials have annually fixed with caulking and blue paint, but the crack continued to widen, reported the Grand Forks Herald.

The Rotary Club raised more than $53,000 and then reached its $100,000 goal with a $68,000 federal grant. Most of the funds will be used to stabilize the ground underneath the statue, which shifts with freezing temperatures.

"Paul and Babe are icons for our community," said Warren Larson, head of the Rotary's Save Babe Committee. "Whether it's a regional or national story that comes out of Bemidji, like our Olympic curlers, the story leads with Paul and Babe."