Recently, using satellite photographs, scientist have discovered that it stepped in this valley roughly 200 million years ago on its way to its winter grazing grounds in what is now Los Angeles.  This means that everyone in Peg’s Bottom, Dufur and Twisp is living in a footprint.

Some experts think that the strange circular stone structure that underlies the fertile Willamette Valley for a hundred miles in every direction may be a fossilized cow pie from the beast.  Oregon State University professor Dalrymple J. Bovine has received a federal grant of one hundred thousand dollars to pursue research  to compute the number of flies it would have drawn when it was fresh. 

April 08, 2001
Boffo Ballet Boots

Perrywinkle Merrybottom, of Rt. 3, Peg’s Bottom made the news on Tuesday when he received a patent on his invention of anti-gravity heels for ballet shoes.  When installed, these cause the slippers to remain on the toes with or without you standing in them.  They’re are expected to sell well to people who stock the top shelves in grocery stores.

April 13, 2001
Irishman Demands Reparations for Viking Invasion of 1145 A.D.

Paddy O’Toole of Rt. 3, Peg’s Bottom has filed suit against the Norwegian loggers in Snooseville, demanding reparations for the Viking invasion of  Ireland in 1145.  He claims  that ever since, his family has suffered from Traumatic Lutefisk Syndrome.  He is apparently terrified of  anything with fins, including 1965 Cadillacs. 

April 28, 2001
Humongous Fungus

Reports came in this week of the discovery near the town of Lapine of a  fungus that is the size of 1600 football fields.  It is the largest single living object on the planet.

Mushroomologists say this fungus was born in 440 B.C., and so is now more than 2, 400 years old.  It is of the truffle variety – you know, the ones trained pigs dig up with their noses -- and weighs three million tons.  At six hundred dollars a pound, it is worth more than Bill Gates, Donald Trump and the Emir of Kuwait combined. 

It is owned by Milburn Salamander of Rt. 2, Peg’s Bottom, who unknowingly staked a mining claim in the dead center of it while prospecting for carborundum which he planned to make into underarm rollon deodorant sticks for feminists.  He plans on harvesting the humongous fungus as soon as he can locate a pig the size of Arkansas.

In other news: Clyde Foofaw’s prize bull is in a full body cast  after trying to mate with a holstein in a dairy company ad on the side of a bus.   Four passengers received mild injuries as a result of the collision and six more selected alternate transportation out of sheer disgust.  

“What does that bull expect to get out of this affair,” said one of them, “a Volkswagen microbus?”

Muriel Podunk of Rt. 1, Dufur has just finished crocheting a mural depicting the winter solstice as seen from the Hudson’s Bay Company facility at Fort Vancouver, Washington on St. Crispin’s Day in 1799.  It includes a life-size  French mountain man, Jacques LeBeast, doing a ceremonial dance with the local Indian tribe, the Sasquatches, who are dressed in bear skins and wearing necklaces made from the shells of large local clams known as  Gooey Ducks. 

The tongue of the Gooey Duck, which runs up to thirty inches in length, can spit water forty-eight feet and has historically served a dual function with the tribe.  It is a very important fertility symbol, and is used to put out  forest fires.  Ten of them can pump out sixty thousand gallons an hour and only need to be dipped in the river for refills every five minutes. 

But if you squeeze the shells too hard in the vicinity of a blaze you can drown in the subsequent explosion, in effect dying of clam chowder immersion.  Also, you don’t want to leave your hand in there when a three foot clam slams shut.

The Right Reverend Portentious P. Praecox of the Church of the Moribund Disciple is recovering from a traumatic injury suffered when his wife, the lovely Dementia Praecox, mistook him for a burglar and cold conked him with a statue of  St. Hemingway in the vestibule. 

Ernest Hemingway is a key figure in that faith.  This was a statue depicting the author’s days in Paris and left an impression of a cafe accordian in the reverend’s skull.  For the first three days after the incident he thought he was Myron Floren and kept trying to play Lady of Spain on his teeth.

April 18, 2001
New Television Programming Needed

Delbert Pickelsimer is unhappy about television programming in America.  He wants the networks to do more programming about futures.  Hog futures.  Soy bean futures.  Barley futures. He owns the feed store which is the only place you can get bag balm within sixty miles.. 

Delbert says that there is an untapped reservoir of drama in futures trading, and has worked up a pilot show titled  IN A PIG’S EAR, which follows the lives of members of the Pork Cartel as they plot to break down legal barriers to selling bacon in Israel.

Meeting Announcement

 Tuesday next, the Pythian Sisters will be holding their annual Spring Succotash Smorgasbord in the basement of the Church of the Moribund Disciple, with the wife of the pastor, the charming Dementia Praecox,  as hostess.  She has asked that no succotash-filled twinkies be brought this year since last year they made everybody who ate them get sick all over the vestibule.