By Chuck Woodbury
This article is fake. It is totally made up. I did not have to tell you that. I could have just passed it off as true. The names of the people and places are made up.Â
So again, this is truly “fake news” and as such it is among millions of other stories on the Web that are also totally fabricated. Sensational stories like this are almost always shared on social media, often for years, earning those who publish the lies lots of money.
So is here is my fake story:
Rat bites woman as she sits on her RV’s toilet
A Lexington, Kentucky, woman got a big surprise last Wednesday when she sat down on her motorhome’s toilet and got bitten by a sewer rat. “Who would ever imagine something like that could happen?” she said later.
Susan Smith and husband, Henry, retired last March, sold their suburban home and bought a 2014 Winnebago Adventurer motorhome to see the USA. “We’d dreamed about doing this for years,” Susan explained.
It was the couple’s first RV. “Looking back, we were clueless about how to operate everything,” said Henry. “I guess that lack of knowledge came back to bite us in the butt,” he said, laughing.
“We had no idea that we should have kept our sewer tank closed when we had a sewer hookup in a campground,” he said. “We just assumed it was best to keep it open. I know now, of course, that wasn’t a good idea.”
AS MOST RVers KNOW, both the black and gray water tanks should remain closed until they are nearly full, and then dumped. Many RVers who have not done so have reported that sewer flies have ended up in their toilet bowl. But until now, no one has ever reported a rat in their commode.
The bizarre rat incident came on the Smith’s final night of a 7-day stay at a Tennessee State Park.
“I just sat on the toilet as I always do,” Susan explained. “I didn’t look at the toilet before sitting down.”
She said it was only seconds after she did that she felt the bite. “I jumped up immediately,” she said. “It was very painful.”
It was only when she looked into the toilet bowl that she realized what had happened. “This large rat was just standing there, staring a me! It was covered with waste. It was the ugliest creature I have ever seen in my life.”
Meanwhile, blood was dripping onto the bathroom floor. Henry helped clean Susan’s wound and capture the rodent, which they took with them to the hospital to be sure it did not have rabies (it did not).
Nobody has yet determined exactly how the rat ended up in the toilet bowl. “All I can tell you is to keep your sewer tank valve closed unless you are actually dumping,” Susan said.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is an example of fake news. It never happened. Susan and Henry are not real people. If we would have tried to pass this off as a true incident, we are sure it would have attracted a huge audience, and those views would have earned us a tidy amount of money.
Be careful what you believe.
##RVT982
Beautifully done. Just enough real content to make it seem legitimate, has a message that we all know is true (keep your valves closed), and then the bit of silliness to make it memorable. Much like the fairy tales of old. The only implausible part was that the capture of the rat seemed too easy.
Amazon are you listening……we need some sort of screened attachment to prevent rodents from inhabiting our black tanks!
and who gives a rat’s patootey?
It will be interesting to see when and where this article gets quoted as the truth in some other publication!
I was thinking the same thing!
I am glad my commode has the flap that only opens when you step on the flush lever… keeps the sewer rats at bay. Also gives you time to grab the gun so you are ready to flush. I have also heard of dismembered zombie arms using this method of gaining entry into a MH.
Times are a changing….
It may be fiction but the fact she was from KY doesn’t surprise me. Poor Rat!
Dang you’re good. Ever think about writing science fiction books?