Hippo Eats Dwarf

It’s difficult to make stuff like this up. It’s tough to make a headline that demands so much attention. Hippo Eats Dwarf. I don’t think a single person can read that headline and not have to read on to find out exactly how a hippo ate a dwarf. If you read a headline like that, you know you’ll be about it later and you better know the details.

The sad news is that I did some “fact checking” and maybe someone did make it up. It appears the story it only a legendary “hoax”, now only an unbelievabe urban legend. It is now only a small internet joke and even some cheesy band has named themselves after the article. Ends up there’s even a book of hoaxes that agrees with me about the gravity of the headline and chose to use it for the name of the book, “Hippo Eats Dwarf: The field guide to Hoaxes and other B.S.”

The article was published back in 1999, and –take it from me- of all places, if a hippo was going to eat a dwarf, it would have happened in Thailand, either in Bangkok or Pattaya. I’ve spent more time than I’ve wanted or would like to admit in Pattaya and their newspaper, The Pattaya Mail, is perhaps one of the best in the world for sheer entertainment. When I was there two years ago I read a story about a prostitute who swallowed a diamond ring. As the story went, some married man picked up two hookers for a threesome, had his salacious fun, and then refused to pay for it. The working girls became angry and went through his wallet and found nothing, and then one saw his diamond wedding ring sitting on the table. I’m not sure exactly how the logic went, but she gulped it down as some form of collateral I guess. As the story went to print they were still waiting for the ring to reappear and confirm the man’s story.

So as for the truth of the article, it’s up to you. But as for me, I have lived here for a little over a year and in that time have seen more unbelievable shit than in the rest of my life combined. So when it comes down to believing this story or not, I like to think of all the other things we believe in just for fun (Santa, Easter Bunny, honest politicians) and I say, it happened. That dwarf screwed up, hit that trampoline wrong and landed in the mouth of a yawning hippo. Why not? Haters say it never happened, but can anyone prove that it didn’t?