WCCO reports Scott Nellis has more than 400 snakes and exotic reptiles. Coon Rapids officials say a city ordinance prohibits the unusual collection and he needs to downsize.

A 15-year-old Coon Rapids student says he wears a rosary as a necklace to feel close to his grandmother, who is suffering from breast cancer. But the Anoka-Hennepin School District told him to remove it.

The new parent company of Fashion Bug is closing the 600 remaining stores by early 2013, including locations in Apple Valley, Brooklyn Park, Coon Rapids, Elk River, Hudson and Shakopee. Last year, 124 Fashion Bug stores were closed.

The South African Olympic runner and double amputee known as the "Blade Runner" is inspiring a Coon Rapids boy to do anything he sets his mind to. Eli Guthrie, 8, has the same congenital birth defect as Oscar Pistorius, and like the runner, had both his legs amputated below the knee as an infant. Guthrie told KARE-TV that Pistorius makes him "want to run around and be in the Olympics and be kind of like him."

The clinic has received a $2.5 million grant to study the possibility of using snake venom to reduce the damage from heart attacks.

The lawyer for a Dakota County dog breeder says the puppies his client allegedly drowned were not pets. He maintains "commercial" animals are subject to a different set of rules than pets. Dayna Bell faces 14 felony and two misdemeanor counts of animal cruelty.