Consider the curious case of the cuddly, yet creepy, canine. I usually call this story "The Mexican Pet," but Nancy Brunner of Pompton Lakes, N.J., recently sent me a version with a slightly different slant.
She wrote, "This is supposed to have happened to a friend of the girl who told me the story in North Bergen, N.J."But it was clear in Nancy's letter that she didn't for a moment believe the story she heard. She wrote:
"It's about this other girl who went for a weekend to a resort at a marina, and there she saw a cute little stray dog and decided to take it home with her. The dog slept in bed with her Sunday night, and she left it in her apartment with her cat when she went to work on Monday.
"When she came home that night, she found her apartment a mess, and at first she couldn't find either the dog or the cat.
"Then she heard the dog growling under her bed, except it didn't really sound like a dog. She never did find her cat and decided to take the dog to the vet.
"The vet took one look at the dog and knew immediately that it was really some kind of a large Australian rat. Apparently, it had killed and eaten her cat!"
This urban legend - thoroughly documented in my 1986 book "The Mexican Pet" - has been wandering around so long and in so many different versions that it deserves to be adopted by some caring person.
Actually, the legend has been adopted by at least one author, as pointed out to me by Kenny and Medina Malcolm of Sarasota, Fla., in another recent letter.
The Malcolms found a more standard version of the story told with several special flourishes in a 1987 book by the well-known religious writer, the Rev. Charles R. Swindoll. The book is titled "Living Above the Level of Mediocrity."
In true urban-legend style, the Rev. Swindoll attributed the "true story" he retold to an unnamed "personal friend."
In this version, two young women from Southern California, while on a shopping trip to Tijuana, Mexico, notice a cuddly canine squirming in the gutter. The animal was, Swindoll wrote in an emotional passage, "a tiny Chihuahua, struggling for its life, breathing heavily, shivering, barely able to move."
The Rev. Swindoll completed the story with numerous details about how the two "gals" smuggled their new pet across the border and then struggled to help it regain its strength.
Though the pet refused to eat any food they offered, one of the women "patted it, talked to it, cuddled it and finally wrapped it in a small blanket and placed it beneath the covers on her bed to sleep beside her all through the night. She kept feeling it to make sure it was OK."
But in the morning the tiny pet still seemed sickly, so the woman brought it to a nearby animal clinic: "Handing the weakened animal to the doctor on duty, she began to describe all the things she had done to help the tiny creature."
The doctor, of course, immediately recognized what species he was dealing with, and he insisted that the women tell him where they had acquired their pet.
Learning the truth, he informed the women that they had adopted not a Chihuahua, but "a rabid Mexican river rat!"
I'm not sure what religious point the Rev. Swindoll was trying to make by incorporating "The Mexican Pet" into his book, but evidently he sincerely believed it to be true, just as his source had claimed.
Either that, or the whole thing is a real swindle.
And have I got a book for the good reverend! - "Curses! Broiled Again," Jan Harold Brunvand's fourth collection of urban legends, is now available in paperback from Norton. Send your questions and urban legends to him in care of the Deseret News.