Who didn’t love Daniel Keyes’s timeless work Flowers for Algernon and its heartwarming passages about mentally handicapped Charlie Gordon’s relations with a little white mouse? Imagine, then the delight of a Gilbert, Minnesota, man, also mentally handicapped, who had as his companion not a single rodent, but over 200. Every day must have been like Christmas morning. And then they tried to eat him.

Police say they were skeptical when they received a late-night call reporting a man being eaten alive by rats and needing immediate assistance. Arriving at the home of the 47-year-old man, though, they quickly realized the rats had taken over his house. Apparently the siege started when the man adopted a pregnant black rat as a pet. As the offspring began mating, it never occurred to him to get rid of some.

Police say that, while the man had indeed been nibbled on, he was far from being devoured. The man was brought to safety while pest control dealt with his vermin.

» Scott Saxon