‘Sponge Animals’ was the name the world’s media gave the sponge animals saga that occured at San Martin County Zoo in early 2001.
Zoo Keeper Bilky Dunn had placed an order with an online zoo animal store, based in Nigeria. Ogimono Janaku, the CEO of the company, proudly appeared on the site’s welcoming pages. Further browsing revealed a vast variety of animals available to order, with Janaku stating that all animals are “cort to orda” and that, on occasion, even he would “hav an involvment in capcha”.
To Bilky Dunn and his staff, the site looked like a good deal, with rarities such as Asiatic Lions going for only $500 US and a rare breed of Dodo costing just $1000.
The zoo handed over around $100’000 for the site’s special ‘Golden Ark’ package and sat back, feeling incredibly pleased with themselves.
With all the rare breeds and hard to come by animals in their zoo, the poor Idaho county town of San Martin would be able to transform the lives of its citizens, by pulling a tourism crowd over 5000% bigger than its present state. Morale in town grew.
The zoo waited for a month – the site stated a maximum delivery time of 28 days – nothing came.
After numerous emails from the company’s many Nigerian staff, the majority of which thanked them for their order and for “sending me munny”, a small packet finally arrived, no bigger than a small suitcase. Inside it were 100 sponge animals, roughly 8cm high, 3cm thick. All were yellow.
“SPONGE ANIMALS???????” said the zoo’s next email, to which the ’3rd sectary to the 4th manger’ Djubey Bombano replied “YES!”
A later email from the company asked “WOT DID U XPECT 4 $100’000?”
The local media were as distraught as the zoo at their loss, but surrounding rival town’s locals, the wider US media and the world media found San Martin’s misfortune hilarious.
Headlines of “Zoo Washed Out by Sponge Animals” to “Nigerians Clean Up San Martin” and “Wiped Right Out” to “Taken to the Cleaners and Given a Sponge” swept across the globe. The media could not get enough.
Nigeria, encouraged by their score, opened thousands more similar businesses, all with the primary aim of ripping off dense Americans for as much money as they could. Known today as scammers, they mostly operate online, although some have been known to operate in person from time to time.
In 2003, the UK sent a £2.5million aid package to the derelict remains of San Martin and its people, after the US President ignored the County’s plight. Within the aid package were 1000 individually wrapped washing sponges, each in the shape of an animal.
The Prime Minister later apologised for the tasteless contents of the package and for any offence that may have been caused by the gesture, stating that all aid packages contain “standard contents”.