Plenty of companies have to fend off rumors about takeovers or financial losses. It's the one about the snakes that plagues Burlington Coat Factory Warehouse.

Since opening its Newark outlet in September, the retailer has been pestered by rumors of snakes nested in the sleeves of its imported coats. The same story has dogged other retail chains, and Burlington spokesman Ric Bramble has heard it for years.

Every so often, it resurfaces somewhere new. "Like the Loch Ness Monster," Bramble said.

The snake tale is typical of the far-fetched stories that bedevil companies. Some businesses try to ignore them. Others fight.

Take Procter & Gamble Co. For almost 20 years, the maker of Mr. Clean, Ivory Soap and Pampers has been going to court to squash rumors linking it with Satanists. The company claims distributors for Amway Corp. have spread the rumors.

Some companies take out ads to rebut rumors. Threatened by consumer boycotts, Snapple Beverage Corp. three years ago mounted a publicity campaign against gossip linking the company to the Ku Klux Klan.

As evidence, rumor-mongers pointed to the circled "K" on Snapple labels – actually, a symbol used on hundreds of foods to show that they are certified as kosher.

In the early '80s, Boston bakers Entenmann's Inc. used ads to dispel whispers that the company was owned by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church.

Entenmann's took the right tack, said Meryl Gardner, University of Delaware marketing professor. The ads didn't name Moon or his group.

"They just said, 'We're a warm and friendly, locally owned company.' They weren't fueling the rumor," Gardner said.

Not that the tales need much help. Kathlene Wheatley, a University of Delaware graphic designer, is one of many Delawareans who has heard the snake-in-the-coat story in recent weeks.

"This girl said her friend told her she was in Burlington Coat Factory. These ladies were trying on coats, and there was a snake in the arm of one of the coats, and it bit her," Wheatley said. "One of my girlfriends told me her mom had heard the same story."

The tale and its variations are more than 30 years old, according to Jan Harold Brunvand, a University of Utah archivist of urban legends. Back in the 1960s, Brunvand said, it was imported rugs that were said to hide the snakes.

A mid-'80s version put the snakes in coats from Kmart Corp. But almost always, the stories have the snakes hitching a ride in goods imported from Asia.

"They came in the coats from India," according to the local tale about Burlington, Wheatley said.

That' s a key to the legend's durability, said Robert Bethke, a folklorist and English professor at the University of Delaware. In the Vietnam War era, the tale fed on Americans' distrust of Asians. And today, it taps at worries that American manufacturing jobs are migrating overseas, Bethke said.

"The basic issues that these stories deal with are still current issues. To the extent they are, these stories are going to keep recycling," he said.

And they are recycled more quickly than ever these days, thanks to the Internet. "It's the fastest method of transmitting correct – and incorrect – information," said James Alexander of eWorks! Inc. The Minneapolis company tracks Net appearances of its corporate clients' brand names.

True, the Net abets the spread of rumors – have you heard that the new BMWs will have laser guns to melt road ice? But it also gives companies a chance to quash gossip.

For instance, Alexander said, one of his clients, Northwest Airlines, was named in a online version of this old tale: A pilot and co-pilot make lewd remarks about a stewardess, without knowing that the plane's intercom is carrying their comments.

The anecdote "surfaces every couple of years, usually with a different airline attached," Alexander said. In this case, Northwest posted an online response to the report, pointing out the story's pedigree.

Some marketing experts suspect competitors aren't above spreading rumors.

A few courts have agreed. Procter & Gamble has at times prevailed in its suits against rival Amway, which has denied the rumor-mongering charges. Two defendants have paid judgments of $75,000, and three others signed statements admitting they spread the lies.

When rivals do spin tales, it is probably the work of company underlings who may have, or think they have, a "wink and a nod" from management, said Stephen Greyser, a marketing professor at Harvard University Graduate School of Business.

"It's definitely not something you see planned under the company letterhead," Greyser said.

Some companies don't think its worth putting up a fight, especially when the rumors aren't a serious threat to sales.

"What we try to do is not talk about it – it just travels further," said Anne Salisbury, spokeswoman for Perdue Farms.

"It" in this case is a hoary tale Salisbury says is absolutely false. To sell its chickens in Latin America, Salisbury, Md.-based Perdue translated into Spanish its ad slogan, "It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken."

According to legend, the translation carried a lewd reference to romance with poultry. Not so, said a Spanish-language expert Perdue hired to check its ads.

Salisbury came to the company 13 years ago. "I believe the myth had already begun then," she said. "Every two or three years, it comes back up."

Burlington Coat, too, has pretty much resigned itself to being grist for the rumor mill. It hasn't taken any steps to stop the snake story. The tale hasn't hurt coat sales, and "it's probably going to be around for many, many years," Bramble said.

"The next thing you know, Bigfoot will be wearing one of our coats, and there will be a snake in it."