Bidder buys burped bones

One of the world’s largest blue catfish didn’t get that way by dieting. Splash, a 121 1/2-pounder caught last January and donated to the Freshwater Fisheries Center in Athens, Texas, has an appetite worth its weight in fundraising. When someone dangled a dinner normally served to alligators -- raw chicken -- she scarfed it.

The giant fish gulped eight drumstick-and-thigh meals per week but couldn’t digest the bones, so she threw them up.

Before they were disposed, the center’s publicist Larry Hodge retrieved them and, in a moment of demented inspiration, thought regurgitated bones might be used to publicize fundraising for a $2-million education building.

Hodge took the bones home and dried them in his oven. “You wouldn’t believe how chicken bones stink up the house,” he says. He spray-painted two pieces with 18-karat tint and offered them on EBay. Bidding for “Slightly Used Chicken Bones” started at $1.

Ten days and 23 offers later, electrical contractor Norman Pemberton, an occasional fisherman, won as bidding ended Dec. 14. He bid $71 but sent a check for $100 as a charitable contribution. The bones, Velcroed in a shadow box, are set to hang at the nearby Frontier Village.

-- Ashley Powers