In variations of this story the confrontation takes place on a bus or subway, and the stolen item may be a watch. At least with a wallet the unwitting thief can identify his victim from its contents and return the stolen goods! The wallet version was incorporated into the 1975 film The Prisoner of Second Avenue, starring Jack Lemmon, based on a Neil Simon play. I have a report of a keynote speaker at a conference claiming that he himself had been the unwitting thief the night before and concluding his anecdote saying, “And now if [John Doe], who is also at this conference, will come forward, I’d like to return his wallet.” A version published in New York magazine in 1987 has a Spanish-speaking victim crying “¡Es mio! ¡Es mio!” to the uncomprehending English-speaking thief. A version published in Germany in 1967 ends with the thief exclaiming, “Mein Gott, ich bin ja ein Taschendieb!” (My God, I’m a pickpocket!) A “Moon Mullins” comic strip of 1935 proves that the stolen-watch version goes far back, but European versions are even older, as the following example demonstrates.
An Englishman managed to get aboard a crowded car one evening and was obliged to stand on the back platform. He was very nervous and imagined that one neatly dressed little man avoided his eyes. Reaching down for his watch, he found it missing. Just after that the little man got off the car. The Englishman followed quickly and the little man began to run. The Englishman finally caught him in a yard hiding behind a pile of wood. He said in a commanding voice: “Watch! Watch!” The little man promptly handed over a watch.
Safe at home the Englishman found his own watch on his dresser where he had carelessly left it in the morning and a strange watch in his pocket. Very much upset by what he had done, he advertised in the papers and in due time the little man appeared. The Englishman began an elaborate apology, but the little man shut him off. “It’s quite all right,” he said, “what worried me that night was that I was carrying 3,000 rubles and I was afraid you would demand those.”
This account is from Louise Bryant, Six Red Months in Russia: An Observer’s Account of Russia Before and During the Proletarian Dictatorship (originally published in 1918), p. 270.
“The Mexican Pet”
A couple from New York are on vacation in Florida. One day they take a rented boat out on the bay to go fishing. Off in the distance across the water they see something small bobbing in the waves, and as they move closer they see that it’s a pathetic-looking little dog clinging for dear life to a piece of driftwood. The poor creature is shivering and evidently scared out of its wits. It whines and squeaks pitifully as they fish it out of the sea and bring it aboard.
The couple take the little dog home, dry it off, and feed it, and they run an ad in a local paper: “Found—small dark brown hairless dog with long tail. No collar.” But nobody responds to the ad, and they take the little dog home with them when they return to New York.
The second day after they have returned home, coming back from work in the evening, they find that their new pet has had a fight with their cat, chewing the kitty’s fur up pretty badly (in some versions, killing and partially eating the cat). They take both pets (or just the survivor) to the vet, who takes one look at their new pet and asks them, “Have you ever heard this dog bark?”
Lane Yerkes. From Smithsonian vol. 23 #8
“No,” they admit, “it never does bark exactly; it just sort of squeaks.”
“The reason for that,” explains the vet, “is that this is not a dog. It’s a Haitian rat!”
(In other versions the vet immediately kills the new pet, then explains what it really is.)
This little parable, with its obvious reference to illegal Haitian refugees arriving on the Florida coast, started circulating in the early 1990s. In San Francisco at the same time the lost “dog” turned out to be a Chinese rat, referring to the West Coast smuggling of illegal Asian immigrants. The earlier version that gave the legend its name, however, was about a “Chihuahua” adopted by an American couple vacationing in Mexico. In 1987 the Rumor Control Center of Baltimore, Maryland, was flooded with calls about a Norwegian rat that had arrived on a freighter and was adopted by a couple who believed it to be a Chihuahua. Besides Central and South American rats, other folkloric species mentioned are Himalayan beach rats, swamp rats, “Wampus” rats, and “Coco” rats. European versions of the story describe a Dutch couple adopting an “Egyptian Pharaoh Rat” or a Spanish couple returning from vacation in Thailand with a pet rat that looked like a Yorkshire terrier. The tabloids have exploited this legend under such headlines as “Our New Puppy Is a Killer Rat!” As recently as August 1996 a reputable news agency circulated a widely printed story about a Ukrainian couple who had adopted a pet that resembled a bull terrier puppy but turned out to be a Pakistani rat.
“The Hare Dryer”
As told by Johnny Carson
There’s a story going around. I told it yesterday to Peter and Freddy. They had heard it. I thought it was a real story, but apparently it’s one of those stories that makes the rounds and comes up every few years, and my neighbor, whom I play tennis with, Howard Smith, told it to me. About the lady whose rabbit died? (To audience) Have you heard it? (Chorus of “nos” with perhaps a few “yeahs.”) It’s a funny story.
Now the way they told it, this neighbor of their’s—apparently had—the people who lived next door—the little daughter, had a rabbit, and the guy who lived next door had a Rottweiler dog. And one morning his Rottweiler comes in and it’s got the rabbit in its mouth, and the rabbit is dead. (Laughter) And the guy doesn’t know what he’s gonna do; he knows the little girl loves her rabbit. So—apparently the rabbit, there’s no blood on it, but the neck, he thought, had been broken by the dog.
So he takes the rabbit and he cleans it up. He even takes a hair, a hand uh (Ed McMahon: hair dryer) a hair dryer. Fluffs it all up very nice, takes it over and puts the rabbit back in the cage, thinking the people will get up the next day and see the rabbit and think it just—the rabbit maybe died of a heart attack or something, and won’t realize that the guy’s dog had killed the rabbit.
Ed: Right.
Johnny: All of a sudden he hears a scream…he runs out next door, and the lady is there. He says, “What’s wrong?”
She says, she’s almost hysterical, she says, “My little daughter’s rabbit died yesterday, and we buried it, and it’s back!” (Extended laughter. Camera zooms back to show Ed and Johnny laughing heartily.) Now I don’t know if that’s true, but that is a great story. Ed: Great, oh…
Johnny: Apparently the dog had dug it up, you know, he puts it back, and you see that lady the next day…(Gestures of shock and dismay) Ed: Oh!
Johnny: It’s like Friday the 13th.
Tonight Show, January 1989. This legend had become so popular the previous year that I dubbed 1988 “The Year of the Rabbit.” Here Johnny repeats on air a “true” story that he had heard from a neighbor and had earlier told to a couple of Tonight Show staff members. His performance now was for Ed McMahon, the studio audience, and his vast television audience. Oddly, Johnny muffed the key term “hair dryer” and failed to exploit the obvious pun that I’ve used as the title for the legend. But his delivery, timing, gestures, and facial expressions were perfect, as usual. Surely many who heard him tell it had heard the story before, and doubtless many, many other people repeated the story the next day.
As told by Michael Landon to Johnny Carson
(Just introduced as the first guest, sits, runs his hands through his hair, shakes his head.) Oh, boy—what a week I had!
Johnny: Yeah?
Michael: I had a terrible experience. You know I moved in to the ranch.
Johnny: Oh, you finally moved into your place?
Michael: Moved to the ranch; I’m in this smaller place until they finish the other. Wanna move in, get the kids used to it, get to know the neighbors. Well, I’ve got the nicest neighbors, right. And I’ve got—you know all the pets I’ve got—I’ve got parrots, I’ve got dogs, I’ve got horses.
The next door ne
ighbor family—it’s a husband, wife, and two kids, they have one pet—a rabbit. Right? Beautiful rabbit.
They go away skiing for a weekend. And I go out to get the paper Saturday morning. My dog, Albert, is sitting by the front steps, and he’s got the rabbit in his mouth. (Laughter)
Now what do I do? I get the dog, I take it in the house, the kids start to…“Oh my God.” I said. “Look, we cannot tell them. These are our new neighbors. You can’t tell them that my dog killed their rabbit.”
I’m gonna live a lie. I take the rabbit in the kitchen, I wash the rabbit off—he’s got a lot of dirt on him. I blow-dry the rabbit. (Laughter) I sneak into his yard, and I put the rabbit back into the hutch.
Monday morning, I go out to get the paper, there he is. Waves. He’s a wonderful guy. I say, “How was the weekend?” I’m playing it cool, “Skiing good?”
“Yeah, powder, beautiful,” he said. “But, boy, a weird thing happened over the weekend.”
I said, “Oh, what was that?”
He said, “Well you know that rabbit I had?”
“Rabbit? Oh, yeah, you have a rabbit, yeah.”
He said, “Well the strangest thing happened.” He said, “The rabbit died on Friday, and the family and I went out and buried it.” (Laughter) Said, “I came home and this morning it was in the hutch again. Clean as could be.”
Believe it or stuff it!
Johnny: (echoing) or stuff it! We’ll be right back. (Extended laughter. Camera zooms back, and fades to commercial break)
Tonight Show, April 1989. Despite having told his own version of the same story just three months earlier, Johnny gave no hint that he’d heard this one before. Landon adroitly converted the legend to a supposed personal experience story, then dropped his serious demeanor at the end to repeat a line from a skit, “Believe It or Stuff It,” that Johnny had just performed. Although this telling has all the earmarks of a scripted comedy routine, Landon’s manner was convincing and innocent throughout. One “folk” version of “The Hare Dryer” describes a baby-sitter who washes the dead bunny in Woolite, then hangs it by its ears in the shower to dry.
“The Air-Freighted Pet”
As told by Paul Harvey
Joe Griffith of Dallas informs our For What It’s Worth Department…of the airline baggage handlers who retrieved an animal carrier in the luggage bay of an airliner….
But the dog in it was dead.
With visions of lawsuits dancing in their heads they advised the woman passenger that her dog had been mis-sent to another destination….
Promised they would find it.
They disposed of the dead dog.
Meanwhile they set out to search animal welfare agencies for a look-alike live dog.
They found one.
An airline baggage handler put the substitute dog in the animal carrier with the lady’s name and address on it—delivered it to her front door.
She took one look and said, “That’s not my dog!”
She said, “My dog is dead; I was bringing it home for burial.”
April 30, 1987
Paul Harvey’s For What It’s Worth (1991), edited by Paul Harvey, Jr., p. 67. In his trademark telegraphic style, Paul Harvey retells what he describes in this book as a “truth-is-funnier-than-fiction” story sent in by a listener. There are many other baggage-handler versions of this popular legend, varying as to place, description of the pet, and reaction of the owner. In July 1988 the Willamette (Oregon) Week free newsweekly reported that former Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North, star of the Iran-Contra hearings, had told the same story during a lecture in Portland, Oregon. Rural and foreign prototypes for the “resurrected pet” theme go back at least to the 1950s, and these stories probably gave rise to “The Hare Dryer” legend quoted above.
“The Poisoned Pussycat at the Party”
A woman had just put the final touch on her preparations for an elegant buffet dinner in her palatial home by adding as the centerpiece to the table a large baked salmon. The doorbell rang as the first guests arrived, and the woman turned away from the table for a moment. Then, hearing the maid answer the ring, she turned and took one more look at the buffet.
To her horror, she saw that her cat had jumped up on the table and was nibbling at the salmon. She snatched the cat from the table, tossed it out the back door, and hurriedly put a lemon slice and some parsley over the bite marks. Then she composed herself and went out to the entry to greet her guests.
The party was a great success, and everybody complimented her on the meal, the salmon in particular. But later as the house got stuffy, the maid opened the back door to let in some air and was horrified at what she saw. The maid tiptoed in and whispered in her boss’s ear, “Your cat is lying dead out on the back porch!”
The hostess had no alternative but to admit to all of her guests that the cat had earlier eaten some of the salmon and was now dead, presumably from food poisoning. She even had to telephone a few couples who had departed the party early. The hostess and all of her guests rushed to a hospital to have their stomachs pumped.
The morning after the disastrous dinner party the woman’s neighbor came over to offer her apologies. She explained that during the party last night she had accidentally backed her car over the cat, killing it. “I knew you were having a big dinner, and I just didn’t want to spoil your good time, so I left your cat’s body on the back porch.”
This story has been a staple of joke books, newspaper columns, and oral tradition for at least 60 years. The main dish at the party is generally seafood—a fish casserole, shrimp salad, salmon mousse, or the like. Even in modern versions mentioning pizza, the suspect topping is anchovies. In Europe the preferred version of the story is that a family picks wild mushrooms and tests some of them on their dog or cat; I heard this one in Romania in 1981. A version in which the mushroom-fed cat seems to be having convulsions was published in a German tabloid in 1981 with its variant conclusion referred to in the headline, “Katze warf Junge—Familie ins Krankenhaus!” (The [pregnant] cat had kittens, but the family went to the hospital!) A transitional American version has the hostess skimming off some scum from atop a can of mushroom soup required in her recipe, then feeding the skimmed scum to her dog. Several stories, plays, and movies have incorporated the poisoned-pet legend, the most recent being the 1989 film Her Alibi in which the cat is thought to have died from eating contaminated stew.
“The Bug under the Rug”
As told by Alex Thien
A friend of mine says a man and wife enjoyed travel more than anything. With the new welcome to Americans from the Soviet Union, they decided to visit Moscow.
In their room at an old, classic hotel not far from Red Square, she said, “I’m still nervous about all this. Are you sure this room isn’t bugged?”
“There’s no reason why it should be,” he said, “but I’ll look around.”
He inspected the walls and flower vases. He didn’t find a thing. But as he walked across the room, he noticed a lump beneath the carpet. He pulled it back and found a metal plate. Just to be sure, he took out the screws. They went to bed.
“Did you sleep well, new comrades?” the desk clerk asked as they were checking out the next morning.
“Just great,” they said.
“Is good to know this for commissar of hotel report,” the clerk said. “Peoples in room below yours had only bad things to say.”
“How’s that?”
“Chandelier fall on them at night.”
From Alex Thien’s column, “Wary Americans check hotel room,” Milwaukee Sentinel, March 19, 1990. The hotel clerk’s mangled English is typical of such travelers’ tales. The Cold War version of the above glasnost-era legend was told in Dick Beddoes’s Pal Hal (1989), p. 190, a book about Canadian hockey-team owner Harold Ballard. This time it’s told about hockey star Frank Mahovlich and his wife staying in a Moscow hotel during a 1972 series of games played against the Soviets. All very well, except that the Little, Brown Book of
Anecdotes (1985), edited by Clifton Fadiman, attributes the incident to Canadian-born hockey player Phil Esposito “in the early 1970s.” Mahovlich and Esposito did play together on Canadian teams that competed in Russia. Probably earlier than any of these versions set in the Soviet Union is one in which the fearful couple are honeymooners who think their friends may have bugged their room as a wedding-night prank.
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Classic Dog Tales
Most traditional dog stories are of the overblown super-heroic genre, and excruciatingly sentimental, as well. It’s the “man’s best friend” pattern: Rin Tin Tin once again saves the day or Lassie rescues little Timmy for the umpteenth time. (At least Wishbone, the dog hero of PBS, has a sense of humor—and wears cute costumes—while he’s fighting alongside the Three Musketeers or playing the title role in Robin Hood.)
Here’s a typical tear-jerker dog legend from Wales. The story is inscribed thus on a stone erected at the supposed site of the incident near Mount Snowdon:
GELERT’S GRAVE
In the 13th Century, Llewelyn, Prince of North Wales, had a palace at Beddgelert. One day he went hunting without Gelert
Too Good to Be True: The Colossal Book of Urban Legends Page 4