Post Office not amused by banana hoax

Press, 3 May 1983, Page 1

Post Office not amused by banana hoax

Sample bottles of urine trickled into some of Christchurch’s suburban Post Offices, and the Health Department’s switchboard was jammed by anxious callers as the result of an elaborate hoax yesterday.

A random selection of houses in most city suburbs received an official-looking letter on Sunday in their letter boxes. Claiming to be from the Health Department, it warned them about a recent “contaminated shipment of Ecuadorean bananas.”

Anyone who had eaten bananas in the last seven days should take a sample of their urine into the nearest Post Office within 24 hours, the letter said. Failure to do so would

result in criminal prosecution it said.

The bananas were supposed to have caused “a highly communicable disease, ophthalmia neonatorum commonly known as Ross River Fever,” the letter said. The contaminated bananas were supposed to have arrived in Lyttelton recently, and the letter urged immediate treatment for anyone who had eaten bananas — "or the virus may begin to affect the central nervous system” The letter and its contents were absolute nonsense, but many people took it seriously. All yesterday morning, people jammed the Health Department’s switchboard asking for details of the

disease the bananas were supposed to cause. Others telephoned their local doctor, and some even took a urine sample into their local Post Office. Neither the Health Department nor the Post Office were amused at the hoax.

Dr W. A. Malpress, the Medical Officer of Health, said yesterday that he was very annoyed about the hoax.

“An unreasonable amount of anxiety has been generated among people, who have been unnecessarily upset,” he said.

“Whoever is responsible for the prank gave very little thought to the repercussions on the community and did not care very much

about his fellow man,” Dr Malpress said. “We’ve got enough to do here on Monday morning, with people who are genuinely ill, without having our switchboards jammed by this sort of nonsense,” he said.

The department had been misrepresented by the perpetrators of the hoax, and it was all in very bad taste, he said. The Chief Postmaster, Mr N. W. Williams, said that several samples of urine had been taken into suburban Post Offices during the day.

“People were told about the hoax and told to take their samples away with them,” he said. Unfortunately, the Post

Office staff had to bear the brunt of their reaction.

“Some of the people who brought in samples thought we were just not taking them seriously and refused to believe it was a hoax,” Mr Williams said. “Some of them did not take too kindly to being made to look a fool, so they took it out on the nearest person — again the unfortunate tellers,” he said.

The Christchurch police are investigating the hoax, and are trying to find out who is behind it. So far, they have not come up with the culprit.

The obvious hoaxers would be university students, since yesterday was the start of Capping Week. But the Student Cap-

ping Committee denied all knowledge of it. Whoever it was, certainly thought the hoax out thoroughly, and went to a lot of trouble and expense to ensure that as many people as possible were affected.

The hoax letter, however, provides some clues to the careful reader that it is not what it pretends to be. At the top of the letterhead is the New Zealand coat of arms, but the motto underneath reads: “Scholae deceptus est.”

The authors of the hoax would have been well advised to have spent a little more time on their Latin homework. A former Erofessor of Classics at the diversity of Canterbury, Professor D. A. Kidd, said

that the motto "was hardly correct Latin.” The three words each meant something, but “they do not fit together to make sense,” he said. Professor Kidd said that scholae was a part of school, while deceptus est meant was deceived, he declined to speculate on the author’s intended meaning. The telephone number of the letterhead is that of a Christchurch real estate agent. The “highly communicable disease, ophthalmia neonatorum,” is a severe inflamation of the eye in a newborn baby, and has absolutely nothing to do with Ross River Fever, which has never been heard of in New Zealand and probably does not exist.