In early March residents of a northern area of Austria were puzzled by a bizarre mystery. The carcass of a three foot long shark had been discovered in a fresh water river.

Fortunately the mystery was solved rather quickly when a man confessed that he’d put the shark carcass in the river as a joke.

The prankster was an apprentice chef who worked at a hotel in the province of upper Austria. He stated that he put the dead shark in the river Voeckla after it began to smell while thawing.

Austrian experts had been hard pressed to explain why a shark was in landlocked fresh water stream.

The chef told a local newspaper that several of the restaurants customers were in on the joke and that they had placed bets on how long they could keep the controversy going.