I have received calls at work about something called an “exodiant (sp?) rat” (3 callers said exodiant, 1 said exultant, 1 said exodent, 1 said ezoda). Evidently, there is an article in “Reader’s Digest” or one of those magazines about a woman who found a dog on the beach in Florida [news to me!], brought it home, it got sick, vet says it’s a rat. [To me, this sounds like RD got suckered in on a variant on the ‘Mexican Pet’ urban legend, but I have not yet seen the article.] None of the callers can identify which issue and can give me no more than the above UL-ish information.
Does anyone know of the article in question so I can get a copy, for reference? (I hate getting broadsided out of the blue!) And what is the name of the “animal”? None of my reference books indicate any such critter as an exodiant rat! (Dog-sized rodent, I’m thinking nutria or capybara, but any other suggestions would be helpful.)
Also went to skepdic.com and urbanlegends.com. Nada except for the MexPet (very familiar with it; fell for it years ago - now I am much more skeptical).
Right now I’m looking for the particular article in the RD or whatever book it’s in. Again, the most of the callers say it’s in RD (if they remember correctly), but no one can remember the particular issue in which they saw the article (or heard about it from a friend).
And, I’d need heavy doses of insulin to shield me from the gooeyness of Reader’s Digest: too cutesy for my reading tastes.
Don’t even try the links above. Didn’t work. I can’t get the hang of url-parsing. Let me try that again: www.skepdic.com www.urbanlegends.com
(Much better.)
I work for a large nationwide conservation society. I admit, this is one of the more unusual calls, and especially to get 6 on the same subject in a short period of time. (I have caller ID and CallBack, and the numbers were from different phone numbers and area codes, so it’s unlikely to be a prank call.) I’ve been in the library all afternoon, but find no reference. If I had the actual article, I could narrow down the search!
Don’t know about “The Tick” episode; sounds amusing, though.
The Tick episode was the first thing I thought of when I read the OP. Tick finds what he believes to be a talking dog in the jungles of South America (of course, it only talks to him), names it Speak, and brings it back with him, only to discover it’s a Capybara.
Might the word be exotic? I seem to recall from one of Jan Harald Brunvand’s books an urban legend called “the exotic pet”, but I can’t remember if it’s one and the same with the story of the Mexican pet (which I remember well).
Too bad you didn’t post this while I was at work… I coulda run over to periodicals and checked the back issues. I’ll do it tomorrow night, if I remember.
That is a possibility, now that you mention it, and would explain a lot It’s just odd having 6 people call and no one gets that word. Then again, it’s likely that the word was misspoken through the the ‘friend of a friend’ chain. I, too, suspect the ‘Mexican Pet’ legend. No one calling has seen the actual article, but most of the callers mentioned ‘Reader’s Digest’, so once I can find the article, I can see exactly what was in print and determine it from there.
black455, that would be really nice. Our local library has a few issues missing or were being used by patrons at that time. (“Excuse me, may I borrow the book for a moment? I’m looking for a rat. No really! Hey, stop it! Ow!”)
I spent most of yeastday afternoon in our office library researching rodents and the Latin names thereof. Learned a lot, but ended up with a cases of the creepin’ willies. :shudder: