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Four workers at a Massachusetts fish farm were trapped in a filtration tank packed with fecal matter for nearly an hour on Friday. The workers were cleaning the 18-foot tank when the bracket securing a plastic filtration pad collapsed.

The workers were standing on the pad cleaning the tank when the bracket gave way according to Josh Goldman, the fish farm’s manager. Goldman said the workers and the pad simply fell to the bottom of the tank. One worker was completely submerged in the slurry of fish poo and sand, the other three were able to keep their heads above the dung.

Turners Falls Fire Captain David Dion said rescue workers retrieved the farmhands by cutting a hole in the side of the filtration tank and basically digging their way to the trapped workers.

The workers were freed from the tank, along with a fair bit of sludge. “It was very slimy and heavy,” said Dion. “Never seen anything like it in my life.”

The worker who was pulled under in the tank was airlifted to Bay State medical Center, but it isn’t thought he had life-threatening injuries, according to Dion. An ambulance took the other workers to a local hospital for assessment of their minor injuries.

“Everybody’s present and accounted for,” Goldman said. “A couple of the guys even came back to say hi.”

Australis Aquaculture fish farm raises barramundi, an alternative to the common grouper.

Farmer Mark Krombholz of Merrill, WI was minding his own business, about to feed his new calf when it hit him – Lucy has two noses. It seems Krombholz didn’t notice anything particularly special about his new calf, born on May 4, until he took her into the barn to feed her.

“I went to feed her a bottle of milk, and I thought maybe she’d been kicked in the nose and there were two noses there,” said Krombholz. The cow’s second nose is smaller and sits atop the first nose – both appear to be functional.

“It looked like she was comfortable laying there in her bedding and breathing and spunky just like you want to see,” said breeder Scott Grund. “It’s just that she’s got two noses.”

Though this type of deformity isn’t usually rooted in genetics, breeders do keep track of mutations. “We fill out a form, send that on to the company in Shawano and they will keep record of it,” Grund said. “If by chance this would occur more than a few times, they would start looking at the sire that we’re using.”

Lucy is the second calf with extra parts to be born in recent weeks. A six-legged cow was born in Litchfield, NE on April 29. That animal, born on Brian Slocum’s Litchfield farm, has also got both male and female reproductive organs. David Smith, a veterinary specialist at University of Nebraska, Lincoln, said that the calf’s dual sex indicates it is the product of embryos for fraternal twins becoming fused in early development. “He’s a real freak,” said Slocum. “I’ve never seen anything like this before.”

Though calves like this don’t usually survive long because of internal complications, the 85-pound Angus calf seems as full of life as the others on the farm, according to Slocum.