Fejee Mermaid

For well over 100 years the Fejee Mermaid has been regarded as one of P.T. Barnum's most infamous hoaxes. What has not been revealed, until now, is McDougal's very important role in the saga of the Fejee Mermaid.

Contrary to popular belief, Barnum did not intend on perpetrating a hoax with the Fejee Mermaid from the outset. With, by today's standards, so little of the world explored at that time, new and amazing species were constantly turning up. Barnum was, of course, eager to exploit anything new and unusual. Being somewhat of a charlatan himself, he was naturally skeptical of the truly bizarre items that people were constantly trying to sell to his museum.

Barnum must have initially been highly suspicious of that mysterious merchant who repeatedly sent him letters full of tales of mermaids in the secluded waters of the Pacific isles. However, when the merchant finally arrived with a specimen, a live specimen no less, Barnum was elated and immediately paid the man without even trying to bargain down to a lower price. The "mermaid" was a dreadful creature, more monster than maiden, but Barnum had learned long ago that the grotesque attracted far larger crowds than the beautiful anyway. He immediately set about the seemingly contradictory tasks of hiding the creature away from prying eyes and heavily promoting its arrival at his museum.

When the exhibit finally opened, the crowds lined up to gaze at the upper body of a monkey sewn onto the tail of a fish, quite lifeless. This was a crude hoax, even by Barnum's standards. Nonetheless, it did not seem to hurt ticket sales at all. This was not much consolation to Barnum, who had arrived at his museum to find an empty tank where the exhibit that was supposed to be his greatest triumph once was. Instead, he was forced to cobble together yet another cheap ruse. The legions of suckers out there in the street may not have cared, but Barnum knew that the mermaid was real, and this filled him with rage.

Fiji Mermaids, as the island is now spelled, were incredibly long-lived. However, they were also incredibly slow to reproduce. The islanders hunted them, believing them demons and white men harvested them, hoping for a quick buck, though no other living specimens ever made it back. The last gasp of the Fiji Mermaid seems to have been the heavy bombardment of World War II. In the decades since, no one has sighted a single Fiji Mermaid in the waters of the Pacific islands. However, at least one Fiji Mermaid survives, unknown to modern science. It swims inside a large saltwater aquarium, where McDougal has kept it since the day he stole it from P.T. Barnum. Above its tank, for company, hangs the original Mona Lisa. That one that hangs in the Lourve? Just another hoax...