2001 Honorable Mention

The Darwin Awards salutes the spirit portrayed in the following honorable mentions, submitted by loyal (and sometimes reluctant) readers.

Wild Mushrooms   DISQUALIFIED (2001) A near-Darwin experience happened at Thanksgiving in the small town of Shamrock. A couple were invited to Thanksgiving dinner with friends, and they decided to bring a treat. So they went wild mushroom picking, and cooked a casserole to share with their hosts. Keep reading -- it's not what you think! The rest of the table was hesitant to try the cheesy concoction, and they uneasily joked about poisonous mushrooms. But the chef assured them that he was an experienced mycologist, and knew the difference between good and bad mushrooms. Convinced, the others eventually dug in. After the main meal was cleared, the leftover casserole was scraped into the cat's dish, and the family feline promptly cleaned his plate. About the time that the dessert dishes were being taken to the kitchen, someone noticed the family cat making odd noises and mewling slightly. Sick cat! His illness pushed everyone into a poisonous-mushroom panic. The Thanksgiving party piled into vehicles and rushed to the hospital, where several stomachs were pumped. When they returned home, weak but thankful to be alive, they found that the cat had not been in the throes of a deadly poison at all -- in fact, quite the opposite. She had given birth to three kittens in their absence. DarwinAwards.com © 1994 - 2005 Submitted by: Corey DISQUALIFIED: No astounding misapplication of judgment, and lacks veracity. This story is probably an Urban Legend, as numerous variants have been reported. It has been seen reenacted by Tom Selleck and by John Cleese, and heard from an 8th-grade teacher. It took place with a salmon instead of mushrooms, or the cat was injured by a neighbor's car. Whether true or false, the precipitous but unnecessary flight to the emergency room is amusing. But the participants didn't make phenomenally bad decisions -- on the contrary, they made cogent decisions that could have saved their lives -- so no Honorable Mention for this story.

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