Hell’s Canyon is a name where you actually expect weird stuff to happen on a regular basis. Knowing that Hell’s Canyon is in Idaho only makes it worse.

For 36 year-old American beauty queen Jamie Hilton it got worse.

During a fishing trip to Hell’s Canyon with her husband, Jamie stumbled and slammed her head causing severe swelling and other complications.

In an attempt to save her life, doctors removed a quarter of her skull to prevent the swelling from causing any more damage.

When the mother of three, a former Mrs Idaho, woke from the operation she found a lump in her stomach and a large portion of her head missing. Mrs Hilton posted a photo of the skull in her abdomen on her blog entitled ‘Miracles… believe in them’ as well as a photo showing a scar running the length of her head.

That’s where her little skull-friend stayed too…for 42 days!

When Jamie had recovered from the first portion of the surgery, it was time to remove the incubating skull-piece from her belly and return it to her dome. You’d think science and medicine would’ve come up with some kind of awesome adhesive at this point like ‘Gorilla Bone & Organ Glue” but nah…

Using industrial strength staples, doctors stapled the skull piece back into place, sewed her pretty little noggin’s fleshy covering back up and called it a day.

Jamie is currently in recovery, doing well and happy as can be.

Guess who’s going to be the ‘astronaut at the table’ when it comes to her interview at the next beauty pageant? Yup…the chick who carried her own skull in her belly like a baby.

Winning!

[Metro.Co.UK]

Everyday this week…Brett Rounsaville brings us the Weirdest Survival Stories ever told.

If the playground taught us anything it’s that everyone needs someone to make fun of, if for no other reason than to feel good about themselves. That holds true even if your name happens to be Arkansas. Who does Arkansas crack wise about while hanging out near the monkey bars, pointing and laughing? Mississippi.

And, although both weird and awesome, today’s survival story sure as heckfire isn’t doing Mississippi any favors on the playground. I can hear the taunts now as Arkansas and Alabama high-five each other and look to New York and California for approval (who, of course, are too busy hitting on Indiana and Illinois to be bothered with southern shenanigans).

“HAHA! Mississippi don’t even use theys brains! We’d be deaderenadoornail if we was shot in the head! Right? *high-five*”

You guessed it. Today we’re talking about a good ol’ fashioned brain shootin’, right in Jimmy Hart’s hometown.

Tammy Sexton was asleep in bed, comfortable in the knowledge that she was safe and sound and that the restraining order against her abusive husband was as good as a George Zimmer guarantee that she would stay that way; when suddenly, much like a cheap suit, he was all over her.

After shooting Tammy once in the head, her husband, Donald Sexton, with a striking amount of foresight regarding the cleaning bills, then went outside and did the same to himself. Little did he know, not everything went according to plan.

When the police arrived sometime later they found Tammy with a rag to her head and an offering of a hot cup of tea. Which she had made. By herself. Alone. After being shot in the brain.

Turns out Donald’s bullet went straight through her skull making a clean exit and somehow only taking “bonus” bits of brain with it. You know, that part of your brain that’s just there for…um…decoration? Seriously. Not only did she make a full and complete recovery but she can still remember how to ride a bike and what the color yellow smells like. (I may or may not have made that last line up…)

That’s it. You’ve heard the five Weirdest Survival Stories ever told. How would you rank them? We have:

1. Wenseslao Moguel, shot TEN times by a firing squad (but not in the brain)

2. Ming Ming, the big eared chinese kid whose life was saved by his lobes

3. Miracle Mike, the headless chicken

4. Tillie Tooter the tough as nails old lady trapped in a upside-down car, and

5. Tammy “Extra Brain” Sexton.

Be loud and be proud, gang. I want to hear your opinions on this.

Everyday this week…Brett Rounsaville brings us the Weirdest Survival Stories ever told.

I hope you guys don’t mind, but I’m going to get a little personal today.

You see, I work from home an awful lot and sometimes when I’m busy I tend to forgo other important tasks…like eating. It’s not that unusual for me to take my first meal around 5pm.

Why 5pm?

Because that’s about the time when, no matter how focused I am, my body starts to turn inward on itself, screaming for sustenance and threatening to begin digesting my stomach lining as punishment for my gastronomical indiscretions. It’s the time when, completely without permission from my brain, my stomach orders my hand to start dialing for pizza. It’s the time when the spasms start and I end up in the fetal position begging my non-existent intern to bring me a sandwich.

5pm.

Tillie Tooter, an 83-year-old woman survived being trapped in her car with only a cough drop, a peppermint and a stick of chewing gum as rations for THREE DAYS. There are a few items here that I feel are worth reiterating.

1. 83.

2. Cough drop, peppermint, stick of gum.

3. THREE DAYS.

4. Upside-down in a tree. (Did I not mention that part?)

Thanks to a hit and run while traveling on the freeway at three in the morning Tillie’s car was pushed off of a raised freeway in South Florida landing 40 feet below in the clutches of a mangrove tree. She dangled above the swamp for three days before a passing landscaper noticed her Toyota Tercel. (Possibly the most disappointing fact of the story. Shouldn’t some little old lady who’s tough enough to survive stuck in a tree for three days be driving a Hummer or something? At least a Suburu, right?!)

In addition to her, ahem…food, (which, let’s be honest here, is probably just the stuff she’d been keeping in her purse since 1983 to punish any grandkids who whine about wanting a snack.) she collected rainwater in her quilted steering wheel cover and a pair of socks she hung the window.

Also worth mentioning, she had no internet service in the tree and I could find no information either confirming or denying whether she was the daughter of Wenseslao Moguel, mother of Ming Ming and/or owner of Mike the Headless Chicken.

Do you know any old ladies that could take Tillie in a bare knuckled brawl? How does her story stack up against the rest of this week’s weird survival stories? Seriously, a Tercel?!

Everyday this week… Brett Rounsaville brings us the Weirdest Survival Stories ever told.

As I was running around like a chicken with my head cut off the other day, scrambling to find a great/weird survival story, I had an epiphany. In hindsight it’s a blaringly obvious epiphany…but an epiphany nonetheless!

For simplicity’s sake we’ll call this epiphany, Mike.

Once upon a time in September of 1945 Lloyd Olsen decided he was having chicken for dinner. Axe in hand he grabbed a struggling Wyandotte chicken named, Mike (Coincidence? No. No it’s not.) and, much like the mighty Casey, the air was shattered by the force of Lloyd’s blow…the chicken however, not so much.

Lloyd managed to miss the carotid artery and a fair chunk of the brain stem despite lopping off the better part of Mike’s head. The result?

EIGHTEEN MORE MONTHS OF LIFE FOR MIRACLE MIKE. And as we learned from our pal, Wenny the other day, not dying is worth its weight in gold. The Olsen’s began touring with Mike raking in up to $4500 a month via sideshows and fairs. But wait, that’s in mythological 1945 dollars. How much is that in REAL money, you ask?

$53073.16!

Sadly, in 1947, Miracle Mike choked to death in his swank hotel room like so many other rising stars who burn too bright. But forget dear Mike not, friends and readers! Instead, honor his memory by playing “Pin the Head on the Chicken” or entering the “5k Run Like a Headless Chicken Race” at the annual Fruita, Colorado “Mike the Headless Chicken Day” held the third weekend of every May!

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go find my axe and some practice chickens in the hopes of paying my rent on time this month…

Ever seen an actual chicken actually running around with its actual head chopped off? Will this beat Wenseslao or Ming Ming’s stories in the Weird Off? What else have you got for me?

Everyday this week… Brett Rounsaville brings us the Weirdest Survival Stories ever told.

What happens nine months after that stick bug from Disney/Pixar’s Bug’s Life and Dumbo get a little frisky one night at a Disney holiday party?

You get Ming Ming. The six-year-old Chinese boy was left alone sleeping in his apartment while his grandfather ran an “errand.” (I’m going to avoid making an opium den joke here.) Unfortunately, the poor kid woke up, freaked out and started wandering the apartment screaming for granddad. With no sign of him inside he wandered out onto the safety grate outside the window where the skinny little rascal promptly fell between two bars 8-stories to his certain death.

This is one of those moments where, if this were a movie, the camera would tilt downward following the trajectory of his death dive only to realize that halfway down he somehow wasn’t in frame anymore, and when the camera quickly tilts back up we’d all be met with the image of a screaming six-year-old boy hanging 80 feet in the air by…his ears.

Yes. His ears. (See, now the stick bug/Dumbo line doesn’t seem so silly after all, does it?)

Eventually firemen were able to force the bars apart and pull the little boy back into the apartment without either dropping him to his death or suffocating him.

No word on whether or not he still had the magic feather in his possession.

Your thoughts? I guess if you had to be dangling 8 stories off the ground by a body part it could be worse, right? Any thoughts on jokes I may have left out? Do you have a better survival story you’ve found lurking around the internets?

Wenseslao Moguel is the guy you never want to run into at a cocktail party…and not just because of his hideous, gag inducing face. In fact, he plays a prominent part in my worst nightmare, if not directly, then at least in spirit.

Imagine if you will: you’re regaling the audience at large with your adventurous tales of daring do. You have their full attention with the story about your time spent in Nevada racing ostriches, you weave a tale of wonder with your hang gliding exploits, finally you have their complete admiration as you outline you time spent living on the streets and on other people’s couches as you wander the country without any meaningful possessions like some sort of extremely selfish Kane. But then, it happens.

Wenseslao Moguel steps slowly out from the shadows letting light fall ever so gently on his disfigured face. Somehow, everyone realizes for the first time that he’s in the room and his mere visage brings the laughter and carousing down to a muted hush. He whispers just one sentence.

“I was shot nine times by a firing squad, and once more in the face to ensure my death.”

HOW AM I (er…I mean…ARE YOU) SUPPOSED TO TOP THAT STORY?!?1?!

Allow me to set the stage. The year: 1915. The verdict: guilty. The revolution: Mexican.

Wenseslao (or Wenny as the kids in the school yard presumably called him) is sentenced to death without trial for his role as a soldier in the revolution. After being shot repeatedly he manages to wait until his executioners leave and somehow makes his way to safety and treatment. (I can only assume he ran across the Mexican wildernesses equivalent of Dr. McDreamy’s skilled surgical hands.)

Wenny then went on to live a long and full life touring with the Ripley’s Believe It Or Not Museum. Oh, and he had a song written about him.

Man, I hope he’s never at the same party as me.

What do you think? Do you have a story that can steal this survivor’s thunder? What four survival stories could possibly be weirder than this one?