FROM April 14 to 20, 57-year-old Norbert Aboudarham, a French playwright spent 10 hours a day in a zoo cage in northern France, searching for inspiration for a new drama "The Panda's Flea". Among other animals, his neighbours have been raccoons, red pandas and wolves.
His work is the third in a series about animals which he began in 2002. Aboudarham's cage in Amiens Zoo is furnished with a bale of straw and a log on which he perches. He does, however, have a laptop computer hooked up to a mobile phone.
He declines to talk to the public and communicates by way of messages passed through the bars.
According to Christine Morrier, a former director of the cultural centre at the zoo, the experiment is a way of "questioning man about his belonging to nature".
DALE Sparks, six-year long mayor of Federal Heights, Colorado, US, was working his third job on April 20, when the cops arrived. That night, they raided the all-nude strip club, where Sparks works as a doorman three nights a week.
Once the police were inside, Sparks agreed to give them a statement and drove his car to the police station. Sparks said he took the job about a year ago because he needs the money for health insurance. The city of Federal Heights has about 12,000 residents, but doesn't pay benefits for elected officials.
"I make US$100 a night, three nights a week, checking IDs and collecting the cover charge. Our health insurance is US$1,200 a month," said Sparks, who also owns a barbecue catering company.
BELIEVING they had a botched burglary on their hands, police in Hayward, California, US, called to a house instead found a naked man wedged in its chimney.
The 23-year-old man, Michael Urbano came home early April 22 and, finding himself locked out and without his keys, tried to enter the single-story house through its chimney.
Urbano's effort ended disastrously when a cable-television wire he used to lower himself snapped. He fell and was stuck in a section of the chimney tapering into the home's fireplace.
For the next four hours he cried out for help. A neighbour called police and fire fighters, who dislodged him.
"We pulled him up to safety, and he didn't have a stitch on. He told us he took off his clothes because as he was going down the chimney the clothes would rub up against it and slow him down. Police arrested Urbano on suspicion of being under the influence of drugs.
