Thanks for quoting me twice in More of the Straight Dope. I notice you discuss the alleged practice of gerbil stuffing. [The gerbil is supposedly inserted into the keester for purposes of sexual stimulation.] Have you found any evidence yet that this has ever actually occurred? I ask because the compilers of News of the Weird include a list of “items recovered from the rectums of patients” (page 157 of their book) that includes “a live, shaved, declawed gerbil.” I included this in a list of ten urban-legend-related items I found in their book in a column I wrote about NOTW, which elicited two nasty, defensive, insecure letters from Chuck Shepherd, its originator. He says the list was summarized from a 1987 issue of the journal Surgery so it cannot be a legend. You and I and everybody else know that the story has circulated since 1982 at least. It doesn’t stop being a legend if somebody tries it, as witnessed by the recent attribution in vicious rumors of gerbil stuffing to Richard Gere.
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I have also gone through the biological abstracts and the Medline computer database. There is an abundant literature on the topic in general, but nothing on gerbils. It is inconceivable to me that a doctor with firsthand knowledge of this bizarre practice would fail to write it up, if only because of the public-health implications.
That does it. I will never trust another human being again. It turns out that three of the four MVPs wore number 32–Elston Howard of the Yankees; Sandy Koufax, Dodgers; and Jim Brown, Browns. But the fourth MVP was not Cookie Gilchrist of the Bills, as the egregious Dave O. had it, but Clem Daniels of the Raiders, who was number 36. You made any money with this sorry dodge, Cecil says give it back.
