BATAVIA, Ohio – An ailing, retired farmer who refused to give up his outhouse after authorities declared it to be a public nuisance finally got a new one.

Elbert “Lew” Preston, 79, stood his ground long enough for a nonprofit group to come to his aid and build him a sturdy new outhouse.

The wooden outhouse replaces a 1960s-built version that had run afoul of public health officials in Clermont County, east of Cincinnati. While the old one was over a hole in the ground, this one sits atop a concrete base and a 1,000-gallon tank.

“It’s too nice and complicated to be an outhouse,” Preston said. “I call it a privy.”

Preston, who is slowed by diabetes and has colon problems and pacemaker, said he never saw the need to replace the old outhouse – which once was picked up and carried into his garden by a tornado without major damage.

New catfish named for longtime mailroom supervisor

PHILADELPHIA – Frank Gallagher spent 37 years as a mailroom supervisor at a natural science museum – so long that he used to wisecrack that he should be part of the collection.

Now he is.

Rhinodoras gallagheri is a new species of catfish named by scientist Mark Sabaj Perez at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia.

Sabaj Perez, who manages the museum’s collection of 1.3 million fish, said he was impressed by Gallagher’s dedication.

“I simply thought, ‘Here is a guy who should be honored with his own catfish,'” Sabaj Perez said in a statement Monday.

From Associated Press reports