Oddly enough

Men flee after seeing 'giant rat' in tire shop

VIRGINIA, Minn. -- A furry, uninvited guest had manly men at an Iron Range tire shop shrieking and hopping on desks. "It was pretty humorous," said conservation officer Dan Starr, who filed a report on the critter's break-in. "Here were these big, burly outdoors guys running around screaming." Taconite Tire employees arrived at work on Monday to find what they thought was a giant rat inside the store. "I was the first one into work that morning and the first one out," said Shannon Bergman, an off-road tire salesman. "I walked in, and in the waiting area I saw this big rat, and I took off." Mayhem ensued. After scampering out the front door, Bergman called a buddy and told him to bring a rifle to dispatch the critter. Dethloff's son, Ryan, a mechanic at the shop, was armed with a broomstick. All of a sudden, he spotted the "rat." "Ryan comes out of the office screaming, and he says, 'It's huge!'" Bergman said. "It was the size of a cat." "I guess he jumped on top of a desk and screamed like a girl who had seen a mouse," Starr said of Ryan Dethloff. In the end, an employee shot and killed what turned out to be a muskrat.

British soldier's postcard arrives 92 years late

LONDON -- A British soldier's postcard to his sweetheart has finally arrived -- 92 years after he sent it from the trenches of World War I. Pvt. Walter Butler wrote to Amy Hicks in 1915 telling her he was alive and well -- but the army issued postcard never made it to her home in Wiltshire, 60 miles west of London. Butler survived the war, and the couple went on to marry. The postcard turned up in a postal sorting office, which sent it along last week to the post office near Hicks' address. A local postman called the home of the couple's daughter, Joyce Hulbert, to announce the discovery. Hulbert, 86, a grandmother of three, said her late parents rarely discussed the war, and that the relic of the past had little meaning for her. She wondered what the fuss was all about. "I think it's rather excessive," Hulbert said. "There's lots more interesting things going on than a postcard arriving 92 years late."

Man wins $25,000 lottery two days in row

MAPLEWOOD, Minn. -- An airline pilot from Maplewood won a $25,000 lottery jackpot -- two days in a row. Raymond Snouffer Jr. matched the winning numbers 11-14-23-26-31 to win the Feb. 10 Northstar Cash drawing with odds of about 170,000 to 1, Minnesota Lottery officials said. On Feb. 11, Snouffer stuck with 11 and switched to 3-7-19-28 -- and won again. Lottery officials said such a sequence was so farfetched that the odds against it were "virtually incalculable."

Teen can't shake hiccups after 3 weeks

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. -- For more than three weeks, despite medical tests and home remedies, a teenager has been hiccuping. A lot. In fact, Jennifer Mee is hiccuping close to 50 times a minute, stopping only when she's sleeping. The 15-year-old has had blood tests, a CT scan and an MRI since the fits started Jan. 23. Drugs haven't worked. Neither has holding her breath, putting sugar under her tongue, sipping pickle juice, breathing into a paper bag and drinking from the wrong side of a glass. And, yes, people have tried to scare them out of her. According to the National Institutes of Health, hiccups can be triggered by anything from spicy foods to stress, and they can start for no reason at all. They're caused by involuntary contractions of the diaphragm, which causes the vocal cords to close briefly, making that distinctive sound. It's painful, Jennifer told NBC's "Today" show Friday, trying to talk through her hiccups. She said the rapid contractions hurt in her back and chest. Jennifer's mother, Rachel Robidoux, turned to a newspaper for help, but the suggestions of hundreds of readers have failed. "I'm just looking for some answers where somebody's gone through this," Robidoux told the St. Petersburg Times. "At this point, we're willing to do anything."

-- From wire reports