Blaming immigrants for eating pets was an American urban legend years before Donald Trump spread the rumor about Haitians in Ohio. Following the pattern of other urban legends, such as the “rat in the Coke bottle” and the “Vanishing Hitchhiker,” the legend that newly settled immigrants are eating dogs and cats has been around for decades. The legends are not harmless fun. After Trump and his running mate JD Vance spread the rumors about Haitians, a bomb threat using “hateful language towards immigrants and Haitians” caused an evacuation of City Hall and children to evacuate an elementary school in Springfield, Ohio.
The Controversy
As with other urban legends, the story of Haitians eating local pets was spread not by eyewitnesses but by individuals claiming they heard the story. “The woman behind an early Facebook post spreading a harmful and baseless claim about Haitian immigrants eating local pets that helped thrust a small Ohio city into the national spotlight says she had no firsthand knowledge of any such incident and is now filled with regret and fear as a result of the ensuing fallout,” reported NBC News.
On X (formerly Twitter), vice presidential candidate JD Vance wrote, “Reports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn’t be in this country.”
Donald Trump made the rumor a central argument against immigration during the presidential debate with Kamala Harris. “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs,” he said. “The people that came in. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating—they’re eating the pets of the people that live there. And this is what’s happening in our country. And it’s a shame.”
Trump and Vance fueled the story. However, NBC News reports, “Local police and city officials have repeatedly said there is no evidence of such crimes in Springfield, but that hasn’t stopped the lies from spreading across the country.”
An American Urban Legend
Long before Springfield residents, neo-Nazis and others spread rumors about Haitians, other Americans told tales of immigrants eating pets. “Do not too easily accept the statement . . . that Asian refugees barbecue pet dogs here ‘all the time,’” wrote Jan Harold Brunvand, professor emeritus at the University of Utah, in 1986.
Brunvand identified stories from the 1980s about Asian refugees eating pets that emerged in Salt Lake City, Utah, Stockton, California, Fairfax, Virginia and elsewhere. “Evidence was supposedly found in garbage cans, and people had heard about Vietnamese wanting to buy puppies or kittens to use for food,” wrote Brunvand in his book The Mexican Pet, one of several books he authored compiling folklore or urban legends. (Journalist Brandy Zadrozny found a 1987 article on the topic.)
Brunvand noted there is typically a racial element to the rumors. “These examples of modern folklore are similar to earlier stories about pet remains found in garbage cans behind Chinese restaurants.”
As if anticipating the current urban legend about Haitians and pets in Springfield, Ohio, Brunvand writes, “Another common twist is the notion that there has been a recent rash of missing pets in the community; the statistics on such crimes, dug up by some enterprising reporter, usually prove to be normal.”
In 1999, in a later book, Too Good To Be True, Brunvand described news stories on allegations of immigrants eating pets: “These items are typical of many similar articles that have appeared in the American press since Southeast Asian refugees began arriving in large numbers during the 1970s and ‘80s. Vague rumors about disappearing pets, strange cooking odors, and supposedly larger problems with pet-eating in another state—usually California—are standard features of such stories.”
Brunvand added, “The prejudices displayed in American ‘eaten pet’ stories are generally directed against Asians, and occasionally immigrants from southern or eastern Europe.”
Today, Haitians are the disfavored group, making the current stories different from those of the past. There is another 2024 twist on the urban legend about immigrants eating pets. In 2024, a former president and his current running mate are the ones spreading the story.
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