“It was the right time for Five the elephant to take a nap but perhaps not quite the best place, as the huge animal caused a traffic jam after snoozing in the middle of the road at a West Midlands safari park. The 20-year-old African elephant laid across one of the roads at the safari park, much to the amazement of park visitors who were forced to sit in their cars until Five was ready to move. The out-of-season warm October temperatures are believed to be the main cause of Five’s relaxation stunt. However it was not too long until the elephant, weighing in at 11,000Ibs, went on his way to find somewhere less gravelly to rest. Safari head keeper Andy Plumb snapped Five in his moment of bliss, telling the Daily Mail: ‘When I arrived there was a queue of traffic forming and it just got bigger – he’s a bit of a character so I’m not surprised he decided to crash out on a road. ‘When he eventually woke up I don’t think he knew what all the fuss was about. There was a big cheer and he just wandered off looking for somewhere else to sleep. ‘We all had a good laugh about it for the rest of the day.” w/ photos

“A young whale which died after it beached in the Humber Estuary is probably of a species rarely found stranded on the British coast, conservationists have said. Experts examining the 33ft long animal, which died about 875 yards from the shoreline, say they are 95% sure it is a female sei whale. The animal was trapped in shallow water near Skeffling, on the north bank of the River Humber. Andy Gibson, of the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust, said Sei whale strandings were very rare. He said there had only been three strandings of this species in UK waters in the last 20 years. ‘It is sad. It was in shallow water of about 4ft to 5.25ft, making contact with the bottom,’ Mr Gibson said. ‘This was about 2,560ft offshore. ‘When it gets in that situation it rolls onto its side and it can cover its blow hole.’ But Mr Gibson said: ‘It is sad but we will be able to learn a lot from it.’ The whale is the latest of a number to have died in the Humber estuary area recently.” w/ photos

“Emma Killilea has no option but to live a thrifty lifestyle – because she’s allergic to money. The 39-year-old, from Sheffield, gets itchy sores on her palms when she handles coins containing nickel. ‘You are always discovering new things with nickel in,’ she said. ‘Coins, buttons, jewellery, zips – the list is endless. ‘It does make shopping a bit of a nightmare. Copper coins cause me the most trouble. They seem to have a very high quantity of nickel in them. ‘The palm of my hands will get severely itchy and irritable for the rest of the day. ‘Thankfully in this day and age we can use cards to buy pretty much everything.” w/ photo

“The Ninety Nine Restaurant in Billerica set a Guinness World Record over the weekend with the World’s Largest Nachos. The nachos weighed in at 3,999 pounds and sat atop a giant, 70 foot, custom-made table in the shape of a horseshoe to reflect the restaurant’s logo, Boston TV station WCVB reported. Led by Ninety Nine Restaurants Executive Chef George Tagarelis, four teams of five people constructed the 1,105 pounds of nachos, layer by layer over the giant table. A second team laid out 825 lbs. of Monterey jack and cheddar cheeses, which was melted using oversized torch guns. The next team added the 439 pounds of cheese sauce, 451 pounds of salsa, 459 pounds of chili, 199 pounds of jalapeño peppers, 90 pounds of diced red onion, 421 pounds of sour cream, and 8 pounds of chopped cilantro. The nachos were created to commemorate a new menu item and to kick off the chain-wide fundraising month for the Boys & Girls Clubs.” w/ photo

“A Simpson County man says he’s been hunting for 50 years, but recently killed something he’s never seen before. ‘It’s an ugly looking beast,’ Truitt Barnard, said. ‘I know it’s not a coyote. I’ve killed some mangy coyotes too, and I just haven’t seen something quite like it.” Friend and family believe this could be a Chupacabra, which literally means goat sucker. Chupacabras are a legendary creature suspected of killing livestock and sucking their blood. A couple weeks ago in the middle of the afternoon, Truitt was on his property in Simpson County just outside of Mendenhall, when a “funny-looking animal” walked through an open field about 130 yards away. He could immediately tell the animal didn’t have any hair, but when he looked through his rifle scope, he knew this was something very strange. The animal’s back legs were several inches taller than his front legs, his ears were rounded, he had no hair and his teeth were very long, said Truitt’s son Scott Barnard. And a group of buzzards wouldn’t even touch it. ‘I’ve never seen anything a buzzard wouldn’t eat,’ Scott said.” w/ photos

“A woman who said she wanted a male stripper for her 100th birthday party was granted her wish by her family. Clare Ormiston, who lives at Glenfield Residential Home in Wythall, Birmingham, came up with a couple of suggestions when her relatives asked her back in June what she fancied to mark the milestone birthday. ‘The first one was actually “a seat on the moon”,’ the former secretary’s daughter Marguerite told the Daily Mirror. ‘Seeing as that was pretty impossible I said, ‘What about something else?’ and she said “a stripper”. ‘I couldn’t believe it. She’s got a wicked sense of humor – I nearly fell off my chair.’ And the new centenarian’s reaction when a male stripper named Scorpion rocked up to the residential home to fulfill her wish last week? ‘I enjoyed that. It definitely put a smile on my face.” w/ photo

“A group of ‘extreme jacuzzi fanatics’ have taken what could be their most daring dip yet – enjoying a hot tub while dangling 130ft from a bridge. The group, who are members of the organization jacuzzi.ch, were suspended from the Gueuroz Bridge in Switzerland with only cables and ropes keeping them up. The tub – which took six hours to assemble on a special platform – dangled 130ft from the bridge and was an impressive 500ft above ground level. Group spokesperson Pierre Cauderay said that 2,500 hours of planning went into the two-and-a-half-hour stunt, during which the group sipped champagne and ate cake in the hot tub and enjoyed the views of the surrounding Trient Gorge. ‘This was the most impressive jacuzzi we’ve had so far and was certainly the most technically difficult,’ Cauderay revealed. ‘We first thought about a jacuzzi suspended from a bridge about two years ago and thought about how much of an amazing experience it would be. ‘It must have taken around 2,500 hours to plan for just two-and-a-half hours in the jacuzzi but it was definitely worth it.” w/ photo

“An unsuspecting birthday girl accidentally swallowed the $665 gold necklace her boyfriend had hid in her cake as a surprise, before having it surgically removed. Romantic Xiao Li, 22, helplessly looked on as Wang Xue gulped down the expensive necklace planted inside a muffin he’d baked especially for his girlfriend’s birthday party in Qingdao, eastern China. ‘I thought it would show how much I love her and it would be a good joke too. But before I could say anything she’d swallowed it in one bite and I had to tell her the truth on the way to hospital,’ he said. After taking an X-ray doctors decided they would need to perform endoscopic surgery to remove the necklace from the 22-year-old’s stomach. A probe was put down her throat and her birthday pressie was fished out as good as new.” w/ photos

“In a city where the local food movement is growing despite the scarcity of arable green space, one Queens couple has come up with a creative way to ensure they have a ready supply of fresh eggs. Robert McMinn, 45, and Jules Corkery, 45, are raising three hens inside their one-bedroom apartment in Astoria. “I don’t think it’s the ideal situation,” conceded McMinn, a public policy associate at the mental health group Jewish Board of Family and Children’s Services. But “they’re cute. They’re fun to [watch] run around. They’re excited when we come home.”… The Serama hens, a small domesticated breed that typically weighs about a pound, nest in a converted ferret cage in the living room, McMinn said. They have the run of the apartment – except for the bedroom – and lay about two eggs each a week. They also have a litter box of sand so they can give themselves cleansing dust baths. But “they poop everywhere,” said McMinn, who uses the droppings to fertilize the soil in nearby community gardens. McMinn began raising chickens in Idaho in 2003 to improve his garden, as the birds aerate the soil through their pecking and scratching and eat pests… “A chicken can save you money. It’s a cheap hobby, and it improves your gardening,” said McMinn, who doesn’t recommend raising them indoors.” w/ photo

“Thousands of beer bottles en-route to pubs and bars in Munich have slipped off a lorry, smashing across a busy road and holding up traffic for hours. It was torture for beer-lovers watching on as firefighters washed the booze down the drains as they cleared the shattered glass. The big spill brought road chaos to the German city, blocking the center for several hours. One firefighter explained: ‘You always get a few who want to sneak a bottle or two from a crash but there’s broken glass everywhere and it’s really very dangerous because the rest of the load could fall at any time. ‘You might love a beer but you wouldn’t want to be be buried under a landslide of it.” w/ photo