Gef
The Evidence for Gef: Pt 3
Gef's Hair
Gef supposedly had very soft yellow fur. One night during Captain McDonalds final visit, he obligingly plucked out a handful of his hairs and left them on the mantlepiece. McDonald sent the hairs to Harry Price, who in turn forwarded them to F.Martin Duncan for analysis.
"I have carefully examined them microscopically and compared them with hairs of known origin," Duncan wrote to Price. "As a result I can very definitely state that the specimen hairs never grew upon a mongoose, nor are they those of a rat, rabbit, hare, squirrel, or other rodent. I am inclined to think that these hairs have probably been taken from a longish-haired dog or dogs."
Duncan suspected that the hairs probably came from the Irvings' sheepdog, Mona. He asked Price to obtain a sample of Mona's fur when he visited Cashen's Gap. Analysis of the sample confirmed his suspicions.
"Your sample on examination is absolutely identical with the alleged mongoose hairs," he wrote. "They all came from the same animal - the dog - and not from any mongoose."
Price ruefully concluded that either "some person robbed Mona of portions of her fur with the idea of providing evidence for the mongoose story," or that Gef himself had "clipped bits of fur off Mona and foisted them on the Irvings as specimens of his own hirsute covering".
Jim Irving later raised the matter with Gef. pointing out that Mr Duncan thought the hairs came from the dog. "He should not think, he should know," retorted Gef brusquely. "He damn well does not know what I am!"
Next: The Quotable Gef