The Great Goldfish Hoax

image It began with a classified ad in the Fresno Bee: "Found: Large, obese goldfish. Approx 11yrs old, blind as a bat." The ad, placed by Lori Igasan, ran for a week, starting March 16, and soon attracted a lot of attention, especially after David Letterman talked about it on his show.

Igasan explained to reporters that she had just walked out of her house one day, when she happened to notice a large goldfish lying on her front lawn. Immediately she ran inside to place it in an aquarium with her pet turtle. She decided to place the ad in the paper in order to find the rightful owner of the fish.

A few weeks later another Fresno woman, Bernadette Planting, identified the goldfish as her own, Charley, who had recently gone missing from her above-ground pool. A local aquatics saleswoman speculated that the fish was picked up from the pool by a large bird and dropped 1.3 miles away on Igasan's lawn.

image
Lori Igasan and the goldfish
The Fresno Bee reported the happy reunion of Planting and Charley on May 9. A day later, after numerous readers called in identifying Igasan and Planting as long-time friends, The Bee admitted it had fallen for a hoax.

The two women confessed to the hoax, saying, "It was not our intention to hurt anybody." Apparently it all started when Igasan, the real owner of the fish, placed the unusual ad in the paper as a way to get rid of her unwanted goldfish. When the ad then attracted so much attention, Igasan talked her friend Planting into coming forward as the owner.

The executive editor of the Fresno Bee said, "We're disappointed that these ladies weren't honest, and disappointed that we didn't catch the hoax." The Bee is running a poll of its readers about the hoax. Currently, 44% think that the women should have told the truth, and only 8% think it was harmless fun. Seems like a harmless joke to me. (Thanks, Joe)

Animals

Posted on Fri May 11, 2007



Comments

I agree, as far as hoaxes go, this one was pretty harmless...
Posted by Nettie  on  Fri May 11, 2007  at  08:08 PM
I'm lovin' it! What a dumbass! The woman claimed she found it "laying in her front yard" alive???!!! That newspaper deserves what it got (as far as embarassment goes). NO fish I've ever heard of could have survived being "dropped by a bird" and left for dead laying in the grass, only to be picked up later by a hapless individual and placed in an aquarium, AND to have survived the whole ordeal...
Posted by Christopher  on  Fri May 11, 2007  at  08:11 PM
That's extremely harmless. Buncha loser's in that town... (no offense to anyone here who lives there, but c'mon, who did they hurt?)

It was a joke.
Posted by Josh  on  Fri May 11, 2007  at  10:07 PM
On a side note, how do you know when a fish is blind?!?
Posted by Josh  on  Fri May 11, 2007  at  10:09 PM
Sheesh, CHILL OUT, Fresno-ites (Fresnans?) That is about the most harmless hoax I've read about in ages.
Posted by Cranky Media Guy  on  Sat May 12, 2007  at  04:25 AM
Pulling the leg of the media is always allowed I feel.
By the way Christopher, you would be surprised what a goldfish can take. I had one once as a boy, who had the habit of jumping out of his bowl. One day I found him out of his bowl lying on the bookshelf, seemingly dead and already dry-skinned. Being a small boy I did not know else but to drop him back in the bowl. Amazingly, he revived and survived. For a few days his dried out slime layer hung in shreds from his body, but he completely recovered. Alas, half a year later he did it again, and this time he did not survive.
Posted by LaMa  on  Sat May 12, 2007  at  06:20 AM
I got no problem with the hoax at all! I think most of this sort of thing is harmless. I was taking offense to those (especially the media) who were offended by getting hoaxed in the first place. The media is always so quick to go for the story, that they rarely go for the facts first. Blame it on the recipients (us) of the stories... Most of the public believes what they read in the press anyhow (In relation to public opinion of the press, I'll quote a line from Joe Jacksons song Sunday Papers "they wouldn't print it if it wasn't true")
Posted by Christopher  on  Sat May 12, 2007  at  08:37 AM
Personally I was offended by this story. I lost my fish a few days ago and these two dirty liars got my hopes up that it was mine!! They shouldn't play with people's emotions like that!!
Posted by Sakano  on  Sat May 12, 2007  at  09:30 AM
Sakano, Ohio is around 2500 miles from Fresno. I doubt you can believe that a fish lasted that long. Clearly you are pulling our collective legs. Good shot. However, the collective experience on this site is such that you should have tried a bit harder to come up with something a bit better.
Posted by Christopher Cole  on  Sat May 12, 2007  at  04:49 PM
Christopher, I was attempting to make a joke. 😛 I thought it was obvious, but I guess you can never tell on the internet.
Posted by Sakano  on  Sun May 13, 2007  at  07:29 AM
"Pulling the leg of the media is always allowed I feel."

If that wasn't true, I wouldn't have a hobby.
Posted by Cranky Media Guy  on  Mon May 14, 2007  at  03:48 AM
The classified ad and the story are both spoofs on the face of it.
First, there is no easy way to tell the age, or even the approximate age, of an adult goldfish. (There are certain ways to judge the age of certain fishes with a microscope and dissecting tools, but they don't work on live goldfish.)
Second, although goldfish are relatively tough fish, it's highly unlikely that one would survive a 1.3-mile trip through the air in the talons of a bird.

Finally, that woman should be arrested for animal abuse. The mini-aquarium she's holding in that picture is way too small for a full-sized goldfish, and even more too small for a turtle. And don't get me started on that hot-pink gravel.
Posted by Big Gary, MoHDCiCoF  on  Mon May 14, 2007  at  04:50 PM
Heh - scientifically speaking, one should cut 'em open and count the rings.
Posted by Barb  on  Wed May 16, 2007  at  10:53 PM
I'm glad to see so many people sharing my thinking on this, particularly Big Gary, who caught the age issue, and everyone laughing at the Fresno Bee for swallowing the whole, silly thing.

Here's the trick; Bernadette is my mother. She called me up as soon as the Letterman thing happened, we had a good laugh, and that was that. As it snowballed I was left simply aghast at the notion that the editors & writers at the Bee were humping this thing's leg so hard. Reading the blog of the journalist who wrote the original piece, he expresses his profession's "pride in [their] mission to tell the truth." Strikes me that the primary mission here was a small-town paper riding Letterman's coattails. Pride took a dive for attention.

That said, Lori can throw down a line of crap like you've never heard in your life.

And for god's sake, "disappointed that these ladies didn't tell the truth..."? I'm disappointed that college educated journalists & editors can't even pull together enough sense after they've gotten caught up in a silly jape to either just drop it at "we screwed up," or to save a little face and play themselves into it.

Silly, silly, silly.
Posted by Sinclair Klugarsh  on  Mon Jul 02, 2007  at  12:23 AM
Hi everyone...this is Lori, the "finder" of the goldfish. Here's how it started...My daughter got a turtle last year & it was getting a bit too big for his 10 gallon aquarium. We have a 50 gallon, but still had one goldfish left in it that was a little one we won at a school carnival 11 years ago. He was pretty big at this point and his eyes had become cloudy over the years, thus leading us with no other logical (and it's all about logic,right?!) explanation than geriatric blindness. I decided I needed to find him a good home, so the still growing, adolescent turtle would have a roomier habitat. Well, being as frugal as I am, I decided to place an ad in the "found" section of the Fresno Bee classifieds as well as the weekly Pennysaver. "Found" ads are free in above mentioned papers. I received an estimated 150 phone calls regarding this ad, mostly people asking how do you *find* a goldfish? Well, in aggreeance with Sinclair's above posted statement about my being able to give anyone a line, I admittedly boast quite frequently that I can make anyone believe anything.

...sorry, all...daughter just called for a ride, so I'll make a continuing post tomorrow.
Lori Igasan
Posted by Lori  on  Wed Nov 28, 2007  at  04:37 PM
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