• When Damien Desrocher, 28, decided to "return to nature" in December, it meant leaving his job as an air force computer technician and moving to the northern French town of Wahagnies, where he started raising snails.
But they're not for eating, Reuters reported. Desrocher harvests "slime" from the snails and uses it to make bars of soap. A single snail will yield about 2 grams of slime.
Desrocher needs about 80 grams of slime to make 15 100-gram soap bars.
"It's all in the dexterity of how you tickle," he said as he demonstrated the harvesting technique. "I only touch it with my finger, you see it's not violent, it's simple."
Desrocher said snail mucus contains molecules of collagen and elastin, which have anti-aging and skin-healing properties. [Reuters, 5/17/2021]
• After Bryan Thayer, 34, finished up at his bar and grill in Metairie, Louisiana, on May 8, he stopped off at the City Bar, where he and a friend bought a drink for another patron, Andrew Nierman, 32.
The first drink they bought spilled on Nierman, so they furnished him with a replacement. But Nierman evidently wasn't satisfied with that. "He grabbed my head and (bit) a chunk out of my nose," Thayer told The Times-Picayune, then ran out and jumped in a car.
Thayer, who was holding his nose together, and other witnesses ran outside and flagged down a deputy, who stopped Nierman.
He admitted to biting Thayer but said he'd been "accosted" by him.
Doctors patched up Thayer's nose, but he said his injuries will preclude him from working at his own bar for a time. [Times-Picayune, 5/18/2021]