The strange case of the Siberian dog boy

Think you follow the news closely? Then here's another little test for you! I'm bringing you five stories from the last week's news coverage. But one of them is actually made up by me. Think you can spot it? Let's go!

Think you follow the news closely? Then here's another little test for you! I'm bringing you five stories from the last week's news coverage. But one of them is actually made up by me. Think you can spot it? Let's go!

1. A child who went missing in Siberia five years ago, at the age of four, has just been found alive and well. He had been adopted by a family of dogs and had learnt to live with them. When asked by reporters if the now nine-year-old Yuri Davidov had become a dog in human form, police said that if anything the opposite was true.

"Usually," said an Inspector Glukov, "these feral children are found to be walking on all fours and communicating in dog language.

"But Yuri must have had an extraordinarily strong character, because single-handed he had taught the dogs how to behave human fashion. He had given them a basic Russian vocabulary, and some of them were even attempting to walk on their two back legs. They were beginning to lose their ability to look after themselves, and we shall now have to retrain them to go back into the wild.

"Yuri himself is fine, and is only sorry he cannot stay with his dog family and continue to teach them football."

2. A man has been arrested and charged with using a mobile while on the public highway. What is unusual about the case of Keith Quardyce is that he was not driving at the time - he was simply walking across a zebra crossing, while chatting on a mobile to his wife. But, being on a public highway, he is subject to the new laws governing mobiles on roads.

3. In a rural part of the State of Missouri a dog which has been missing since it was a puppy has been found alive and well, living with a family of cats. The cats adopted it, probably thinking it was some sort of mutant cat, and brought it up as one of them. The dog now mews, and drinks milk, and kills mice by the score.

A judge has ordered its natural canine rights to be restored to it, and have it retrained as a dog. The dog's lawyer is fighting for its right to remain a cat by conversion.

4. A French court has heard how a jealous wife tried to shoot her millionaire husband because she thought he was having an affair with the au pair. In fact, he claims, he wasn't having an affair at all. He was merely trying to buy a painting.

The wealthy husband, M. Gaston Robert, had recently conceived a violent passion for the work of Edward Hopper, the American artist. He calculated that he could afford to buy one of his paintings and instructed his accountant to go ahead with the sale.

" J'aime cet Hopper avec une passion incroyable!" he told him.

The wife overheard him.

In French, "Hopper" is pronounced exactly the same as "au pair".

The Roberts had a very pretty au pair from Romania. The wife put two and two together and believed she was being deceived. She decided to eradicate her erring husband. Luckily, she was a very bad shot.

5. An aboriginal child in Australia, lost four years ago, has been found in the bush, happily living with a family of budgerigars, who have looked after her.

"She can't talk," say the police," though she sings beautifully. And she can only hop along on both legs. Oh, and she can fly, in a rudimentary fashion. We'll have to get that out of her system, for a start."

Well?

Did you spot that the one about the budgerigars was a load of cobblers?

Well done!

And did you spot that all the others were equally fallacious?

Honestly, modern news reporting fair makes you sick, doesn't it?