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Hippo Goes For A Swim
Status: Hoax
Here's a story I missed last month, even though it occurred right here in my backyard (figuratively speaking). FoxSports.com took the lead in disseminating it, but versions of it, such as the one below (from the Seattle Times) appeared in many papers:

The San Diego Chargers moved their practice operations to Arizona during last week's devastating fires in Southern California, depriving special-teams coach Steve Crosby of a genuine Kodak moment back home.
As Jay Glazer reported at FoxSports.com: "Crosby received a call from his wife informing him that she walked outside to assess the damage and get this she found a hippopotamus in their swimming pool! A hippo!
"She called the authorities, who came and tranquilized the animal and removed it."
The Crosbys live near the San Diego Wild Animal Park.

Turns out there was no escaped hippo lounging in Steve Crosby's swimming pool. The San Diego Wild Animal Park doesn't even have hippos (though the San Diego Zoo does). Crosby claims that it was a locker-room joke that somehow got mistaken as real news.

He should have said there was a hippo in his pool eating a dwarf.
Categories: Animals, Journalism
Posted by Alex on Thu Nov 29, 2007
Comments (1)
More from the Hoax Museum Archives:
As long as they don't have any dwarves in their back yard, they shouldn't have much to worry about.
Posted by Big Gary, MoHDCiCoF  in  Fossil Rim, Texas  on  Thu Nov 29, 2007  at  02:05 PM
Comments: Page 1 of 1 pages

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