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From: iayork@panix.com (Ian A. York)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Re: Pakistani sewer rats (Was: stupid newbie Darwin Award ...)
Date: 19 Feb 1997 12:12:25 -0500

In article <330A5944.35D9@constant.com>, Bob <hankins@constant.com> wrote: >
>The L.A. Times was doing a lot better that day than they were when they
>recently reported on the Ukrainian family who vacationed in Pakistan and
>brought back the cutest little dog, only to learn back home that it was
>actually...guess what...A PAKISTANI SEWER RAT!!!!

How recently was this? The story itself is a variant on an old, old UL (Brunvand used it to name his book The Mexican Pet) but the Pakistani/Ukrainian variant is not only new, we may know exactly where it was first reported. There was a flurry of reports on this for a while, but they died down after September. Could you give more details on the LA Times sighting?

My brother sent me the original version of this (a couple of weeks before Western papers started reporting it). Here's how it went then:

Hi Ian -- I spotted a classic urban legend on Itar-Tass, the Russian news agency. The story, from Kiev on Aug. 9, quotes a Ukrainian newspaper (Vseukrainskiye Vedomosti) which describes an incident involving a Kiev resident named Viktor R. (Notice that he is basically unidentified -- no last name, and his first name is one of the most common in Ukraine.) He allegedly returned home from a ~foreign tour" with a bull-terrier puppy which he had purchased for his wife and three-year-old son. The puppy, named "Denny", allegedly ~made the whole family glad, ate everything and did not demand much -- but remained somewhat mirthless and taciturn all the time."

Of course you know what happens next. The parents are woken by the frantic shrieks of their child, Denny is biting off the child's ear, the father kills the dog, and a vet informs the father that it was ~a rare species of Pakistani rat, which in its early age resembles a bull-terrier puppy."

The previous sightings of this version went like this ...

-Date unknown (early August?): reported in a Ukrainian newspaper (Vseukrainskiye Vedomosti)
-Aug. 9: reported in Itar-Tass. This is the version my brother sent me and I posted on Aug. 12.
-Aug 17: reported in the Atlanta Journal Constitution and the Baton Rouge Advocate as reported here by two of the steaming millions.
-Aug. 19: the Rocky Mountain News Science section runs it. This one refers to The Kiev Vseukrainskye Vedomosti; I'm not sure if it came directly from it or from Itar-Tass. (Terry Furuli's report.)
Aug 19: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, "Earthweek section". (snopes)
Sept 2: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette runs letter suggesting their previous story (Aug 19) was a UL. From Ann M. Friedrich, New Kensington. (Posted by snopes.)

All of these are unique in referring to "Victor R.", Pakistan, a "bull terrier pup," and so forth, so they all are the same variant. I believe that this is one that got picked up from the Itar-Tass story (which in turn picked it up from the Ukranian paper, but I suspect that Tass is more likely to be read by Western sources than is the Ukranian paper).

Any other sightings of this? Any other variantions?

Ian "mirthless and taciturn" York