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Colo-Rectal Mouse

Debunked: Well-known film/TV personality (Richard Gere, various news broadcasters, et al.) put a gerbil up his ass for "wriggly furry fun".

This series of legends apparently originated in the early 1980s (possibly in the Chicago area); the story may be applied to specific individuals, or to a general group of people. No convincing evidence for it has ever been produced. Cecil Adams, in his Straight Dope column, lists some of the paths he followed in search of a genuine sighting; none materialized. An MD who claimed to have seen X-rays of a rectal gerbil told us that he had not seen the case--the x-rays were duplicated from a different hospital; photographers say that making a mock X-ray would be trivial. A medical school professor has offered a reward to any of his (graduated) students who find evidence for this; several years worth of graduates have not tried to claim the reward. Medline has no relevant articles, although many, many articles discuss articles found per rectum. (Mentioned in Brunvand's The Mexican Pet as "The Colo-Rectal Mouse".)

Documented: People put assorted objects up their asses, get stuck, removed in hospital.

References:

• Urban Legends Archive: Gerbilling Section
• Bay Windows: In Seach of the Elusive Gerbil Lover
• Urban Legends Archive: Misc/uls and memory
• The Butt Page: Rectal Foreign Bodies
• Cecil Adams' Straight Dope column on rectal gerbils