Watercooler Stories

Woman raises baby hare in bra

UPPER FARRINGDON, England, Sept. 22 (UPI) -- A Englishwoman who discovered a live unborn hare says she kept the baby rabbit alive by carrying it in her bra.

The woman, Margi Heath, 57, of Upper Farringdon said she kept the leveret warm that way, feeding it baby formula with a syringe, The Daily Telegraph reported Sunday.

"She stayed indoors with me," Heath said. "I put her in my bra to keep her warm, else she would have died. I slept with her and every time she was hungry she popped her head up."

The hare, named Miracle, is now a tame 3-month-old rabbit, the newspaper said. She was found alive inside the womb of a pregnant hare killed by a dog.

"She's quite tame now," Heath said. "She has a lead we use to walk her with, and lets people stroke her, though she can tell if someone is a stranger."

Woman weds where she was hospitalized

CHICAGO, Sept. 22 (UPI) -- A Chicago woman says she wanted to send a message of hope by holding her wedding at the hospital where she had a brain tumor removed 12 years ago.

Lindsay Anderson, 22, and her fiance, Josh Leve, were married Saturday in the courtyard at Children's Memorial Hospital as patients and their families looked on, the Chicago Sun-Times reported Sunday.

"It gave me a lump in my throat and tears in my eyes to see them there," said Anderson, who invited the young patients to share her wedding cake.

Eight-year-old Amanda Vicari of Portage, Ind., said she enjoyed "seeing how people get married and seeing my future and how I can do it," the Sun-Times reported. Vicari has had two kidney transplants and a liver transplant at Children's.

Anderson, who now is in good health, had a tumor removed at the hospital when she was 10. The tumor was benign but had caused frequent seizures since Anderson was a baby, the Sun-Times reported.

Online party braggarts net $320K tax bill

EDMOND, Okla., Sept. 22 (UPI) -- The age-old practice of bragging about being a party animal has brought $320,000 in MySpace-era consequences for five Oklahoma college students.

The University of Central Oklahoma students founded a party business in Edmond, Okla., called Kegheadz, and bragged on its MySpace.com page about "over a billion served," "biggest party in the state" and "biggest party in the country," The Oklahoman reported. And that caught the interest of state tax officials.

Kegheadz founder Julius Baroi says the loosely organized business netted only about $1,700, but has been hit with a $320,000 tax bill.

"This is crazy," Baroi told the newspaper. "The (Oklahoma) Tax Commission claims we owe more than $300,000. We don't have enough money between us to pay $6,000 to hire an attorney. They won't listen to us."

Paula Ross, spokeswoman for the commission, told the newspaper she couldn't comment on an individual taxpayer's case.

Most unhappy students found at top schools

LONDON, Sept. 22 (UPI) -- The more prestigious the university, the unhappier the students, a British school rankings survey published Sunday indicates.

Such elite British universities as Bristol, Edinburgh, Imperial College London, the London School of Economics and Manchester placed poorly in The Sunday Times' guide when it came to student satisfaction, the newspaper said.

Some analysts said that may be because the elite schools place more emphasis on research than on undergraduate teaching.

"The key thing is the amount of personal attention students get," Alan Smithers, director of the center for education research at Buckingham University, told The Sunday Times. His school, a private institution, ranked first in the newspaper's satisfaction table.

"The model of the British university system is self-motivated students learning from the experts in their field," Smithers said. "That has been maintained at the top of the table where institutions are small, or offer a high staff-to-student ratio or a tutorial system."