Hoax Museum Blog: Animals

Bonsai Kittens — For some reason I've been getting a lot of email lately about Bonsai Kittens. I can't figure out why, since that hoax is almost three years old now. But I guess interest in some hoaxes just never dies (unlike those poor kittens in the jars).

Whale Watching in the Midwest — A visitor pointed out to me that I had neglected to include Lake Michigan Whale Watching in my list of hoax sites. Plus, while we're on the subject of whale watching in the midwest, let's not forget the web page devoted to the wonders of Mankato, Minnesota, where the temperature never drops below 70 degrees fahrenheit, even in the dead of winter, thanks to the presence of hot springs that heat the air. Mankato boasts a thriving whale watching industry on account of the annual summer migration of the whales up the Minnesota River. And to return to Lake Michigan, who can forget the case of the Viagra spill that temporarily revived its flagging spirits.

Puppy Love — It sounded awful. Five puppies thrown onto the highway from a moving car. Tracy Lloyd claimed that she managed to save one of them, while other motorists scooped up the other four. Turns out the whole tale was bogus. Lloyd wasn't allowed to keep pets in her apartment, so she had made up a sob-story to convince her landlord to bend the rules for her. Her story was exposed when the person who sold the dog to her saw Lloyd telling about the highway incident on tv.

It’s Jackalope Hunting Season — June 31 (which was yesterday, or maybe today, or maybe neither) is the only day of the year on which it's legal to hunt jackalopes in the state of Wyoming. You can get your own Jackalope hunting license from the Douglas, Wyoming Chamber of Commerce.

Big Roosters — A visitor named 'AJ' wrote in with this question:
Awhile back there was a picture of a Very Big Rooster with a guy
in a cowboy hat and a rope tied around the neck of the rooster, where Can I
find that picture?
Here's the picture, plus a look at some other big roosters of yesteryear.

Dog Island — Someone just sent in this hoax website: Dog Island. It's doggie paradise, where pooches get to roam free and play all day. As the website says: "They live with almost limitless space, and tens of thousands of rabbits, rodents and other natural prey. Surrounded by thousands of other dogs, this is the only place for them to be truly social and create healthy families." Dog Island and Yoga Kitty. Hmmm. Soon we'll have a world of stress-free pets.

The Celebrated Ceramic Toad of Osaka — From the Financial Times, the search for the celebrated ceramic toad of Japan:
Few stories encapsulate the madness that was Japan's economic bubble as neatly as the tale of the most powerful ceramic toad in stock market history. At one point in the late 1980s, this toad controlled a Dollars 20bn portfolio, having received trading tips via messages from the gods. This amphibian George Soros has since disappeared, and its owner, a former bar hostess-turned-restaurant owner, is in jail. But on the basis that the gods might still be sending it messages, the Financial Times travelled to Osaka, Japan's most entrepreneurial city, to try to track down this slippery metaphor for all that went wrong with Japan. The toad was owned by Nui Onoue, herself an extraordinary product of the 1980s. Having started out as a hostess, she invested funds derived from her relations with a powerful construction magnate in a restaurant in Osaka's entertainment area of Sennichimae. It was on the fourth floor of this restaurant, called Egawa, that the toad held court. Mrs Onoue had developed a reputation around the tables of her restaurant for astute stock market purchases and her customers demanded to know her secret. She led them upstairs and showed them the one metre high ceramic toad. She asked them to lay their hands on its head, chanted some mantras, and dispelled the toad's wisdom in the form of stock market tips. If the toad's influence had ended there it would have been little more than a story of unusual reptilian resource. But as word spread she was visited by senior executives from the Industrial Bank of Japan, Nomura Securities, Yamaichi Securities and others. According to Alex Kerr, an author, by 1991, IBJ had lent her Y240bn and 29 other banks and financial institutions had advanced her more than Y2,800bn. Lines of limousines were parked every night outside her restaurant awaiting the toad's pronouncements. Her portfolio collapsed alongside the Nikkei 225 in 1989 and Mrs Onoue was eventually sentenced to 12 years in jail for using fake certificates of deposit as collateral for loans. The chairman of IBJ, one of Japan's most powerful men, was forced to resign as a result of his trust in Mrs Onoue's web-footed friend. But the whereabouts of the toad remain unknown.

Crocodile Hoaxes — Online crocodile hoaxes.

Rattlesnakes Introduced to Wisconsin — Rumors that the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources was introducing rattlesnakes into Wausau County get tempers rising. But the rumors were false.

Is it a dog, or is it dinner? — Hoax Website: petsorfood.com.

Quarter-stealing Bird — A bird that steals quarters from a vending machine. Is this a hoax? I honestly don't know.

Update: Apparently it's not.