Remember “Doug,” the huge potato a New Zealand couple found in their garden last year? I wrote about him at the time:
…a charming little story out of New Zealand. It seems a couple found this huge potato growing in their garden. Since they didn’t plant it they’ve no idea how it got there. Colin explains that their gardening technique consists of “throw(ing) a bunch of cow manure and straw onto their garden and see what happens.”
Come to think of it that’s pretty much how we got our potato, too.
And we seem to be having the same trouble with our potato as Donna and Colin Craig-Brown had with theirs:
As the couple showed the potato off, it began drying out and losing weight. Mold started growing from its wounds. "He was getting a bit pongy," said Colin, referring to the potato's smell.
So they changed the spelling of their potato’s name to “Dug,” which seems more appropriate, and stuck him in the deep freeze planning to turn him into vodka at some point. Again, something we may wish to consider doing with our own pongy potato at some point.
But now, a year hence, comes the bad news from the people at the Guinness Book of World Records who were checking “Dug’s” DNA:
Guinness broke the news to Colin and Donna in an email last week. The message reads, in part “sadly, the specimen is not a potato and is in fact the tuber of a type of gourd. For this reason we do have to disqualify the application.”
So it turns out the big potato is nothing but a big fraud.
Donna with her tuber, in happier times
Now the only question remaining: does that make our potato the world record holder? Or is ours also a tuber?
What difference, at this point, does it make?
As they say, it is what it is.
And what it is I fear is quite obvious.
The question is what now?
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