According to a machine translation of this article (via El Reg, unrelatedly), a circus was closed, and the owner charged with fraud, in Italy, because:
Some shaggy dogs dyed in panda patterns were on display as purported dog/panda hybrids.
Wait. You mean to tell me that a circus owner fibbed to the rubes? And induced members of the public to part with their hard-earned cash with things that were not as they seemed?
Isn't that what circuses do?
Now I'm thinking of one of the early Discworld books, in which the then-Patrician of Ankh-Morpork (if memory serves) had decreed severe penalties for writing things which were not exactly and literally true, with dire consequences for metaphors and such. Also, a perennial favorite Dickens line springs to mind.
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