Too Good to Be True: The Colossal Book of Urban Legends

by Jan Harold Harold Brunvand

  The joke ends with the communist authorities, clearly not amused, sending the fisherman to a psychiatric hospital.

  In early April the story of the falling cows popped up on the Internet global computer network….

  A news story, bylined Susanne Hoell, forwarded to me as E-mail, thus continuing the transmission of this story via print, broadcast, and now electronic media. This Reuters story goes on to trace the passage of the story out of Russia via German and American embassy personnel and eventually to the Western press. The story concludes with a quotation by a spokesman from the Russian Defense Ministry, “This is sheer nonsense. Not a single word is true.” Reuters, incidentally, often distributes stories of this kind reporting bizarre incidents that supposedly occurred abroad. The older “joke” version of the flying-cow story appeared in a Moscow News column in the June 1–7, 1990, issue. I discussed this one as well as versions from Great Britain in The Baby Train. In the June 1997 issue of Alaska Fishermen’s Journal the story was repeated again with the disclaimer that “We cannot verify the accuracy of the following story, but we are compelled to pass it along because it’s too weird and wonderful to bury.” This publication’s source was an individual who found it on the Internet. Granted, “The Flying Cow” is pretty far from its roots as oral folklore, and a cow is not exactly wildlife, but the story is too weird and wonderful not to include in this chapter. Besides, the Reuters story calls it “an urban legend,” and Reuters wouldn’t lie, would they?

  “The Fatal Boot”

  I remember a story told by my step-grandfather who was born in Kentucky. The eldest of three brothers bought a pair of boots. While the boots were still new he was in the woods and was struck by a rattlesnake. The snake bite caused his death. The next brother inherited the boots, began wearing them, and died. The youngest brother suffered a like fate.

  When the property was put up for sale, someone, in examining the boots, found that the rattlesnake had broken off one fang in the heel of the boot. The venom on that fang had caused the death of the brothers.

  That had to be a record for one snake!

  This is the full text of the story sent to me in 1987 by Tom Riley of San Antonio, Texas, that I paraphrased in discussing “The Fatal Boot” in Curses! Broiled Again! Like “The Wrong Rattler” story in the introduction to this chapter, this legend is an old rural tale that continues to be told in modern urban settings. Sometimes the boot is specified as a cowboy boot, a hiking boot, or a rubber boot worn while doing farm work. In 1991 David Young of Ore City, Texas, wrote to say that he recalled from a 1966 trip to Florida being shown the actual “fatal boot,” except that it was a shoe this time. He wrote, “We stopped at a lot of tourist traps, and the shoe was in a lighted glass display case with the story posted next to it: shoe was passed on to brother, brother died. Fang discovered too late.”

  “Snakes in the Amusement Park”

  I heard this story several years ago, and I believe it to be an urban legend. You be the judge.

  Some years ago at an Ohio amusement park called Cedar Point a husband, wife and son went to spend the day. Cedar Point is in northern Ohio on Lake Erie; it is an old area, overgrown with trees and vegetation, and very moist. The family arrived early in the morning, and they went on the “Log Ride” first. This ride involves single seating in a “log” that travels up through the trees, down a log chute, under waterfalls, and down a final hill before slowing to a stop. The ride supposedly follows the route a log would take after it is cut and sent down river.

  The story goes that they had a whole “log” to themselves, and the little boy, eight years old, begged his parents to let him ride in the front seat alone while they rode in the back seating compartment.

  They parents agreed, and they settled into their respective seats and began the ride. A short time into the ride, the parents noticed their son moving about wildly and flailing his arms. The mother and father assumed that their son was just having a really good time.

  But when the ride stopped, the child was slumped over and dead! When the seat was examined, a small poisonous watersnake was found coiled in the floor where the boy’s feet were. The snake had repeatedly bitten him several times during the course of the ride. He had been moving about wildly trying to escape the bites. Apparently the ride had not been checked out thoroughly when the park opened.

  Sent to me in January 1992 by Deborah Bowman of Worthington, Ohio. This story is told about numerous rides—from the Tunnel of Love to roller coasters—at amusement parks coast to coast, especially in the South and Midwest. Often there are said to be watersnakes that bite the hand of a rider who has dangled it into the water. In other versions the snakes, or sometimes other creatures, have infested the ride cars, merry-go-round horses, etc., during manufacture abroad—usually said to be India—or during storage over the previous winter. Even modern, up-to-date amusement parks are plagued with stories like this, and similar tales are told about those bins full of plastic balls now found in the “playlands” of fast-food restaurants.

  “The Snake in the Strawberry Patch”

  Lorrie Ostrowski told a tale “the girl at work swore is true.”

  A woman with her 2-week-old infant beside her, was driving a pickup truck in the Tappahannock area. The woman decided to stop on the side of the road to pick strawberries and briefly left her son in the truck with a bottle of milk.

  Returning to the truck a few minutes later, the woman noticed something black dangling from her newborn’s mouth. The black object was the tail of a snake that had slithered down the baby’s throat after the milk and killed the boy.

  Now doesn’t that story make you drop your fork?

  But wait a minute. The story is loaded with holes. After all, who ever heard of a snake desperately seeking milk? FALSE!…Or, maybe, true?

  The easiest trail failed. Mrs. Ostrowski asked her friend to talk with a reporter, but the friend refused.

  Mrs. Ostrowski, 23, of 10340 Iron Mill Road, a secretary at Robertshaw Controls Co., then asked for the number of the coworker’s aunt, supposedly the source of the story. The coworker refused to give out her aunt’s phone number or name.

  So, the next option was the Essex County Sheriff’s Department, which covers Tappahannock.

  Essex Sheriff Denwood W. Insley had heard the story.

  “The source was just general gossip,” Insley said. “I overheard, being mentioned in general talk, that it happened in…King and Queen County. Whether or not it happened, I don’t know. But, I know it didn’t happen in Essex County.”

  Sheriff Robert F. Longest of King and Queen County also knew of the story, but heard the snake incident happened in Chesterfield County.

  “I heard rumors, and that’s all I know. If it happened in my county, it was not reported to my department. I feel reasonably sure that it didn’t happen in King and Queen County,” Longest said.

  “It didn’t happen here,” said Alan W. Thompson, an investigator for Chesterfield County, who had not heard of the incident. “I’m sure if it happened, we would have heard about it.”

  Susan Gilley, of the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, had heard the story, but said it could not have happened because a newborn’s mouth is too small for a mature black snake to enter.

  However, she said a young black snake—which is gray and brown, not black—could fit.

  She offered the name of a snake expert, Dr. Joseph C. Mitchell, a University of Richmond research biologist specializing in reptiles and amphibians. He laughed at the story.

  “Snakes don’t drink milk. They’re carnivorous. Snakes wouldn’t even be attracted to milk. That (tale) is crazy and totally beyond the known biology of snakes,” Dr. Mitchell said.

  OK, so this urban rumor unreasonably attributes powers to a snake!

  The story appeared to be false, but where did it originate?

  Faithful folklore followers pointed to the book The Choking Doberman and Other New Urban Legends, by Jan Harold Brunvand, to chec
k the story’s history.

  Sure enough, a variation of the snake tale, attributed to an old Irish legend, is cited in the book….

  This is the first half of an article by Eileen Barnett published in the Richmond (Virginia) News Leader on August 24, 1987. “The Snake in the Strawberry Patch,” another updating of an old rural snake story, was very popular in North Carolina and Virginia that summer. The notion that snakes crave milk is the basis for many older legends, and the snake supposedly creeping inside someone’s body is often the consequence of this craving.

  18

  Pet Problems

  I’ve included stories so far in this book about pets that are flushed, poisoned, crushed, roasted, microwaved, buried and exhumed, stolen on the way to burial, and subjected to various other dangers and indignities (including some unspeakable acts involving gerbils). So why do I need to add a separate chapter titled “Pet Problems”?

  In part, I just like the alliteration of the title. Second, this chapter provides a nice balance to the previous one on wildlife. Mostly, though, it’s because there are a few more exotic hazards to pets and pet owners not covered earlier, and I really hate to leave anything out.

  Pet problems are a major theme in legends worldwide; every major pet legend I can think of that’s popular in the United States seems to have its counterpart abroad, although occasionally I hear a pet story from overseas that hasn’t yet shown up in the United States. Take “The Battered Cat,” for instance, which I’ve collected only from England so far, where it is told something like this:

  A cat dashed into the road, and a motorist could not avoid running over it. There was a sickening thump, and the driver stopped as quickly as possible and ran back to examine the poor animal and to see if he could help it. He found the cat lying on the grass by the roadside, eyes closed, on its back, its feet in the air, but still breathing.

  Thinking that the cat was unconscious and dying after the accident, the driver ran back to his car and got his jack-handle out of the boot [the trunk of the car]. He gave the recumbent cat a quick strong blow to the head to put it out of its misery.

  Then an old woman ran screaming from a nearby house, exclaiming that this mad driver had killed her cat, which often liked to snooze there by the roadside.

  The driver tried to calm her, but the woman’s screams aroused the neighbors, and they insisted that the police be called to investigate.

  They found the body of the cat that had been hit by the car still wedged underneath. The man had beaten the old lady’s sleeping pet to death.

  On this side of the Atlantic, “The Tranquilized Cat” is a story I have thus far heard only from the States. This one was first sent to me in 1994 by Vince Macek of Decatur, Georgia, and this time the problem is more with the pet owner than with the pet:

  A woman was planning to take her cat with her on a plane trip. At a doctor’s appointment she asked her doctor if there was anything she could give her cat to keep it calm on the trip. After a moment’s thought, the doc took a tranquilizer pill, broke off a portion that seemed about cat-dosage size, and told her to give it to the cat about an hour before takeoff.

  Some time later the doctor related this to a veterinarian associate, and the vet said, “You didn’t really do that, did you? Why on a cat that drug has the opposite effect as on a human. That cat will be a clawing wreck!”

  Later the doctor saw his patient again, and she told him, “I took your advice and gave my cat the pill, and on the plane he was out of control, about to jump out of his skin. It was all we could do to restrain him.”

  The doctor didn’t know what to say—luckily—and the woman continued, “I can’t thank you enough for that pill, doctor. I just can’t imagine how the cat would have behaved without it!”

  Cats are the certified funniest animals in American urban legends, but overseas—especially in Britain and the former colonies—the clown prince of pets is the budgerigar (i.e., budgie; you still don’t get it? Then how about parakeet?). I think it’s partly the name of the bird involved that appeals, since “budgie” seems funny to me however you say it. Here’s a budgie legend from New Zealand, which is easily recognized as a variation on the “Hare Dryer” story of Chapter 1:

  Some workmen were fixing the gas pipes leading into an old lady’s house. She had to go out while they were working, and she kindly invited them to go inside and help themselves to tea and biscuits during their break.

  However, the workmen had a mishap with the repair, and some gas escaped into the house. They went inside to open some windows and doors, and there they found the lady’s pet budgie lying on the floor of its cage, apparently gassed to death.

  None of the workmen could bear to tell the kind little old lady what happened, so they carefully propped the bird back up on its perch in a lifelike posture. When the lady returned home she immediately spotted the bird and shrieked, “But my little budgie was lying dead on the floor of his cage when I left this morning. Look! He’s come back to life!”

  I believe the all-time most popular British budgie legend was best told by folklorist Paul Smith in his 1986 The Book of Nastier Legends. I’ve got lots of variations of this story on file, but this particular telling definitely gains in effect from the stiff, dry style with which an Englishman narrates it:

  There are times when you can try just too hard. A young man was invited for the first time to visit his girlfriend’s parents’ home. As he was very keen for them to like him he was all set to make a good impression, whatever might happen.

  When he arrived at the house he was invited in only to discover immediately that his future mother-in-law was desperately fond of budgerigars. Unluckily the young man was allergic to such pets—a fact which he regrettably attempted to hide.

  They were all sitting together in the lounge when the conversation turned to pet birds, and the girl’s mother let the budgie out of its cage to fly around the room. It flew round for a while and then settled on the young man’s head. In desperation he tried to dislodge it but misjudged his actions and knocked the bird straight off his head into the roaring fire, where it burnt to death in front of everyone.

  If you are keen on situational humor rather than funny language, you may prefer the version of this story in which the young man has no allergy and the bird does not actually land on his head. Instead, the bird keeps flying back and forth, and the young man, leaning back to relax and cross his legs, happens to catch the budgie in mid-flight, booting it neatly into that same roaring fire.

  * * *

  “The Captivating Kitty Collar”

  As reported from Australia, a handyman friend of a friend rigged up a cat-door gadget so that a woman’s pet feline would be able to gain entry to her house but other neighborhood strays would not. The friend attached a strong magnet, with the negative pole exposed, to the cat door, and then put another such magnet on the cat’s collar. A latch held the door shut when stray cats tried to sneak in.

  When the family cat approached the door, the two magnets repelled each other, tripping the latch, and the door swung open. It worked just fine, until…“One day puss disappeared. When he didn’t turn up for dinner, the woman got worried and began to search the neighborhood. She eventually found her cat three streets away. It was stuck by its collar to a car’s hubcap.”

  * * *

  “The Bump in the Rug”

  Born Loser © Distributed by United Feature Syndicate. Reprinted by permission.

  There’s a story going the rounds that involves a carpet layer who had worked all day installing wall-to-wall carpeting. When he noticed a lump under the carpet in the middle of the living room, he felt his shirt pocket for his cigarettes—they were gone. He was not about to take up the carpet, so he went outside for a two-by-four. Tamping down cigarettes with it would be easy. Once the lump was smoothed, the man gathered up his tools and carried them to his truck. Then two things happened simultaneously. He saw his cigarettes on the seat of the truck, and over his shoulder he heard the
voice of the woman to whom the carpet belonged. “Have you seen anything of my parakeet?” she asked plaintively.

  From the “Laughter, the Best Medicine” section of Reader’s Digest, May 1964, where it is credited to “Bob Casey, quoted by Frank Rhoades in San Diego Union.” I first heard this story from a University of Utah student in 1980, who said it was supposed to have happened to a coworker of his father some twenty-five years earlier. In 1987, a reader in Brooklyn, New York, wrote to say that his father told the story as a personal experience that happened to him in the late 1950s. On October 16, 1988, Dr. Patrick D. Shelley, minister of Plymouth Congregational Church in Lansing, Michigan, startled my parents in the congregation when he quoted “The Bump in the Rug” from my book The Choking Doberman. Dr. Shelley commented in his sermon, “I share this particular story today because it illustrates beautifully how tragic events often occur in life: sometimes with the best of intentions, sometimes with no intentionality at all; but always with traumatic consequences.” In the April 23, 1990, issue of People magazine a profile of Don Aslett, a professional housecleaner, included this exchange: “What are some of your most bizarre cleaning experiences? Once, the lump under the carpet that we were beating on turned out to be a kid’s hamster….” In England, of course, the trapped pet is a budgerigar; I do love that word!