Examples:
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[Healey & Glanvill, 1996]
A friend of a friend was caught red-handed with another woman by his long-time partner, and came home the next evening to find that she had flown the nest. Within days, the heartless brute had invited his new lady to share the flat. But, after a few weeks, a strange smell appeared to have taken over the bedroom. No
Over the summer months, the noxious brume had graduated from a honk to an almighty hum, and very fishy it was too. In fact, it got so bad the anguished couple decided they had to move out. The stench meant they had to sell the flat well below market value, but they were happy just to be leaving their pongy past behind. Just as the removal van was being packed, the former cohabitee — who had got wind they were moving out — drew up in her car. Apparently, she was responsible for the noxious odours. She'd secretly emptied an economy pack of prawns into the hollow curtain poles in the bedroom as a devious revenge for her treatment. As if making the new couple move house wasn't vengeance enough, the cuckold could hardly contain her glee when she spotted the removal men lugging the brass curtain poles into the van bound for the brand new apartment. [Collected on the Internet, 1998] Back in 1992, a friend of my fiance had a major disagreement with her boyfriend, so decided to get back at him. He had bought himself a new car (around $30,000 worth), which was typically his pride and joy. She had two other friends remove the passenger seat from the car, and then she cut open the lining along the edge and inserted a fresh fish, then neatly restitched along the seam. It was fine for the first few The boyfriend vacuumed, deodorised, pulled out the seats washed everything When the two split up he had no luck picking up a new bird because no woman would set foot in the car. He finally gave up and sold the car: losing around $12,000 to $15,000 of its actual worth because of the horrible smell. |
Variations:
- Shrimp are stuffed into curtain rods or sewn into the hems of drapes.
- Fish are hidden in a car seat or secreted in a door panel.
- The wronged woman is either the man's wife or his long-term
live-in girlfriend. Either way she's a sympathetic figure, as even in the case of thelive-in, special pains are taken to establish the length and seriousness of the relationship. One version makes special mention of her putting the cad through law school.
This is a tale of revenge, pure and simple. Maybe someone somewhere actually did pull this at one time, but one has to wonder if there are that many vengeful women out there, each of them happening upon the notion of hiding rotting seafood in possessions cherished by their
Driving the tale is the belief that men value possessions far more than they value relationships. Striking back not at them, but at what they own, is seen as a killer blow.
Barbara "shellfish motive" Mikkelson
Sightings: You'll find mention of a similar stunt in John Steinbeck's 1945 Cannery Row. The character Doc advocates getting revenge on a bank by renting a safety deposit box, depositing a salmon in it, then going away for six months. Also, in the 1993 film, Grumpy Old Men, Walter Matthau hides a fish inside Jack Lemmon's car. And in the 2003 made-for-TV movie A Tale of Two Wives, the wronged women hide shrimp in the bigamist's office blinds.
Last updated: 23 April 2008
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Sources:
Barreca, Regina. Sweet Revenge: The Wicked Delights of Getting Even. New York: Harmony Books, 1995. ISBN 0-517-59757-8 (pp. 76-78). Braude, Jacob. Braude's Treasury of Wit and Humor. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1964. (p. 18). Healey, Phil and Rick Glanvill. Now! That's What I Call Urban Myths. London: Virgin Books, 1996. ISBN 0-86369-969-3 (pp. 241-242).