Fact Check

Trouble Brewing

Photograph shows a parachutist about to drop into a pond surrounded by dangerous-looking reptiles?

Published Dec. 7, 2005

Claim:

Claim:   Photograph shows a parachutist about to drop into a pond surrounded by dangerous-looking reptiles.


Status:   False.

Example:   [Collected via e-mail, 2005]




I received this photo along with "This Jumper has a REAL problem, Huh?" as the subject line. Is this photo real?






Origins:   One of our favorite running gags in
Gary Larson's Far Side cartoons was his "Trouble Brewing" series, each entry of which typically showed a looming confluence of situations that would inevitably result in disaster. One such example is the following cartoon, which placed "Anderson's Sky Diving School" directly adjacent to "Crutchfield's Crocodile Farm":



It appears someone has artificially recreated this humorous situation in the photograph displayed at the head of this page, which shows a parachutist descending into a body of water whose banks are completely surrounded by a bevy of carnivorous reptiles, by using an existing photograph of water and reptiles (one identified elsewhere as a picture of a Louisiana alligator farm):

This image also appears as an entry entitled "Unlucky Training Jump" in Worth1000.com's Unlucky Day 5 PhotoShop Contest.

Last updated:   7 December 2005


David Mikkelson founded the site now known as snopes.com back in 1994.

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