Police responding to a report of a man being eaten alive by rats broke into a Michigan home to find a mentally disabled man being nibbled on by more than 200 of the rodents.

The 47-year-old victim had apparently bought a few black rats as pets, but they multiplied and eventually took over his house. “In this occupation, you see a lot of things,” said Gilbert Police Chief Mark Skelton. “You can never say that you’ve seen it all, because you haven’t.”

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The Naked Civil Servant is alive and well and living New Zealand.

That’s where legislator Keith Locke says he’ll make good on a promise to run naked through the streets of Wellington if a rival party leader was re-elected, which he was.

“It will be artistic, and it will involve body paint,” Locke said of his endeavor.

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Photos of Adolf Hitler and Nicolae Ceausescu are being used in ads to persuade people to adopt stray pooches in Romania.

Posters feature the madmen, who were dog aficionados, with the slogan: “A dog loves you just the way you are.”

“Our idea is to make people sensitive to what an animal can offer in terms of affection by showing them that even the most hated dictators on this planet received love from their dogs,” said animal-welfare boss Ioana Casetti, who’s also using images of President Bush.

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A Polish man pointed a gun at a hair stylist and forced him to give his girlfriend a free haircut and dye job.

But apparently unhappy with the results, he returned a day later to the Tschenstochau Salon in Czestochowa and again, at gunpoint, demanded the hair dresser redo the job, even insisting on hair extensions to fix the length.

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Animal welfare workers in London launched a 48-hour stakeout after reports from neighbors of an abandoned dog on an apartment balcony.

Neighbors claimed they had heard pathetic whimpers and saw “droppings” fall to the ground. But they were howling in embarrassment when the pooch turned out to be a stuffed toy.