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Published January 13, 2015
There’s nothing corny about getting married … unless you happen to be marrying Brian Rueckl.
Forget roses and fancy dinners, Rueckl wanted his proposal to be really unique. And exactly what — dare we ask — constitutes a decidedly different proposal in Rueckl's mind? Fashioning a 40,000-square-foot message out of corn. Duh.
So after a year of planning and some serious pruning, Rueckl asked his girlfriend, Stacy Martin, to be his bride in an airplane overlooking his work — a corny question complete with 40-foot letters and giant hearts, The Green Bay Post Gazette reports.
"At first I was in shock and forgot to say, 'yes,'" Martin said.
But take it easy there, Romeo.
Before you haul off and start hacking away at your neighbor’s shrubbery, hell-bent on romance, know this: popping the question with corn — or any other plant life, for that matter — takes a lot of work.
Rueckl used spray paint, stakes, Geographical Information System software, a GPS device and a whole lot of elbow grease to make his intentions known. Tilling the message alone took 10 hours.
"We got bit up by mosquitoes and sunburned, but it was worth it," Rueckl said. "It was definitely a good reaction."
Thanks to Out There reader Cary W.
Put Cash in the Can or the John Stays on Your Lawn
CHAUNCEY, Ohio (AP) — A citizens' group is trying to pay the street light bill with a little potty humor.
The Chauncey Emergency Management Group places an old-fashioned, wooden outhouse on a resident's lawn with a donation box where the toilet bowl should be and a sign on the door that says "Redneck Wishing Well."
People who find the latrine in their yard have to chip in to get it shipped out. They also get to pick the next home it graces.
The emergency management group's Jerry Dowler, whose phone number is posted inside the outhouse, hauls the privy in his pickup truck.
The money — donations of any size are acceptable — helps cover the southeast Ohio village's $500-a-month bill for street lights. Voters defeated a tax levy last year, and a committee that gets money from local cable TV bingo has paid the bill since then.
In its first two days, the outhouse collected $200, Dowler said. The primary purpose of the emergency management group, which is made up of village officials and citizens, is to keep the lights on.
The emergency management group takes over the bill this month, and the levy is on the ballot again in the fall. If passed, enough money to pay the bill would not be generated for about a year, Mayor Fredricka Shover said. In the meantime, the group has raised about $3,000 through bake sales, car washes and the outhouse.
“There's a lot of people who really care about Chauncey," said Ronnie McKibben, a member of the village council and the emergency management group. "There's a spirit in this community."
Thanks to Out There reader J. Walker.
Behold! Bionic Dung
HOUSTON (AP) -- NASA's rocket scientists have a new appreciation for the out-of-this-world power of bird droppings.
The orbiting space shuttle Discovery sported some whitish splotches on its black right wing edge that NASA officials said appeared to be bird droppings. Shuttle lead flight director Tony Ceccacci said he saw the same splotches on the identical part of the shuttle about three weeks ago when Discovery was on the launch pad and laughed when pictures beamed back from space Wednesday showed they were still there.
That means these bird droppings withstood regular Florida thunderstorms, a mighty Fourth of July launch during which 300,000 gallons of water is sprayed at the shuttle's main engines, and a burst upward through Earth's atmosphere.
During that launch Discovery went from zero to 17,500 mph in just under 9 minutes. And still the bird droppings remained in place. Mostly.
Some of the droppings may have shaken off during liftoff, Ceccacci guessed. He figures the rest will burn up during landing, when the shuttle's edges get as hot as 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
Rob Fergus, science coordinator for Audubon At Home, a division of the National Audubon Society, sometimes gets calls from people asking how to remove bird excrement from their cars.
"Usually they can hose it off," he said. "Apparently that doesn't work with the space shuttle. Maybe they need a bigger hose."
Mmm ... Pepperoni and Anchovy Swirl ... Wait, Never Mind
NEW YORK (New York Post) — It takes a lot to gross out Ben & Jerry's.
"We eat anything," says flavor guru Arnold Carbone. "So if somebody puts something in front of my face and says, 'Taste this. This is sour cream ice cream with onion and potato chips in it.' I'm going to taste it."
As long as he doesn't spit it out, it's a contender.
"That's how you come up with the flavor concepts nobody's ever heard of before. Put everything together and see what floats," he says.
Tip for contestants in the Vermont-based company's ongoing "Do Us a Flavor" contest: Chips and Dip is one combo that didn't fly. And just for the record, you're in the running with some 35,000 suggestions already entered at benjerry.com.
The Vermont-based creamery won't start testing the flavor wannabes until the contest ends this month and they weed out obvious misfires. For instance, vanilla ice cream with Jujubes in it; those hard little filling-loosening candies would be even harder frozen in ice cream.
"The ice cream would melt before you got the Jujubes out of your mouth," Carbone warns.
And how gross is too gross?
"Pretty gross is when you start playing with savory, strong, oniony, garlicky. We tried pepperoni pizza with anchovy swirl. Now that didn't work," counsels Carbone, whose official title is Conductor of Bizarre & D.
"There's not too much typical about the way we do things at Ben & Jerry's," he adds.
That derring-do has built them a fan base for pull-out-the-stops cult classics such as Phish Food and Chubby Hubby, with peanut butter-filled, salty, chocolate-covered pretzels. They even produced pints of Black & Tan, based on the beer cocktail, a flavor which works because the dark chocolate ice cream swirled with cream stout ice cream gives just a hint of vanilla-like malt and a little hint of beer.
But what they're really searching for is the next flavor we'll fall in love with.
Think what your mother made as a dessert that you like ice cream on. But don't play it too safe, Carbone says.
"I just think that anyone entering this contest should go kind of wild."
He's Not Fat, He's Festively Plump
PORT ARANSAS, Texas (AP) — Among the beach pictures, jewelry and nautical decor at The Connoisseur, Chester roams — slowly.
The 31-pound orange tabby cat has become something of a tourist draw after he was featured in a May segment of Texas Country Reporter, a television travel show.
"They said they wanted to interview Chester," said owner Cassandra Clark. "I thought that was the funniest thing ever, but they were serious."
But even before that, word was traveling about Chester.
"All day, every day, people want to see the cat," said Rhoda Gleason, a store employee.
She and Heather Conner, another worker, know by heart the list of questions that come when customers first see Chester.
Is it real? (Yes.)
How much does he weigh? (About 30 pounds.)
Can he walk? (Yes.)
What does he eat? (He shares one cup of cat food with another cat each day.)
Clark said the cats share one cup of cat food each day, and only Chester has grown into a tourist attraction. Rat weighs in at 12 pounds. Several cat care Web sites list a cat's ideal weight between 6 and 12 pounds for small and medium breeds and up to 20 pounds for large breeds.
Clark said she and her veterinarians aren't overly concerned about Chester's weight but will try to bring it down.
Exercise is out of the question.
"How do you get a cat to exercise?" she asked.
Compiled by FOXNews.com's Taylor Timmins.
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