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Most of the April Fool's pranks that appear on the Internet on or around April 1 have petered out by a day or two later; some of the more subtle satirical articles may continue to circulate for a few days longer before some readers recognize them as humor rather than genuine news stories. For whatever reason, though, a mummified fairy prank of 2007 was still going strong well after April 1 had come and gone, even though its creator had long since admitted to the hoax and the fictional tale had been exposed by major news outlets: The mummified fairy supposedly found in Derbyshire by a dog walker at Firestone Hill near Duffield was the work of former Derbyshire resident Dan Baines, a prop maker. Baines posted an article (titled Do Fairies Live at the Bottom of Your Garden?) presenting an elaborate backstory about the creature's discovery, along with several close-up photographs of the small, detailed fairy figure he created, on a web site a few days before April Fool's Day 2007. The hoax was quite the hit for a few days as netizens debated its details and origins, and then on April 1 Baines 'fessed up by appending the following message to his fairy article: The prank was even prominent enough to merit coverage by the BBC: Dan Baines later put his fairy figure up for auction on eBay, where it fetched a high bid of £280.00.
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