Posted by Jim at January 30th, 2005

My mom works as a media specialist (librarian/IT person) in a local school system. Here is a story that she told me:

A co-worker’s daughter is house sitting for a family who lives in Chicago. Their dog dies. She calls the family and asks them what she should do and the family says to have the dog appropriately disposed of. She calls around and finds a place that will do it for her for $100. It’s close enough that she can walk, so she stuffs the dog into a suitcase and carries it.

Despite fitting into the suitcase, it is still heavy. She gets tired after a bit. Fortunately a guy sees her, picks up the suitcase, and helps her along. After a while though, he does ask what’s in the suitcase.

Not wanting to say “A dead dog,” she says, “All my possessions.”

Moments later he runs off with the suitcase, never to be seen again.

I found the story very funny and decided to write a blog entry about it. As I began, I told my wife what I was doing.

“It sounds like an urban legend,” she said. “They’re always a friend of a friend.”

“Yeah,” I said, “but we’ve got an actual name here.”

Kristen wasn’t convinced.

As she walked upstairs, I typed the following words into the font of all knowledge (Google):

urban legend dead dog suitcase

Here’s the result.