Claim:
Claim: Firemen successfully rescue a stranded cat, then run over it as they are leaving.
LEGEND
Example: [Pile, 1979]
During the firemen's strike of 1978, the British Army had taken over emergency fire fighting and on
Origins:
This legend's key is the irony that the very people who come to rescue a cat end up inadvertently killing it. Though this story has since entered the realm of legend and is now told as happening in a number of different venues, it might have originated with a real incident that took place in 1978 and was subsequently reported as an "And
Barbara "ooh, that run-down feeling" Mikkelson
Last updated: 1 August 2011
Sources: |
Brunvand, Jan Harold. Curses! Broiled Again! New York: W. W. Norton, 1989. ISBN 0-393-30711-5 (pp. 163-165). Bryson, Bill. The Blook of Bunders (Bizarre World). Great Britain: Sphere Books Ltd., 1982. Marsano, William. Man Suffocated By Potatoes. New York: Signet, 1987. (pp. 215-216). Pile, Stephen. The Book of Heroic Failures. London: Penguin, 1979. Shannon, Sarah. "And Finally . . . The Gaffes." The [London] Evening Standard. 3 March 1999 (p. 56).
Also told in: |
Petras, Ross and Kathryn. The 176 Stupidest Things Ever Done. New York: Doubleday, 1996. ISBN 0-385-48341-4 (p. 144).