Speaking of the Oozie!

Further Greetings!

Yesterday when I told you of the dock-side conversation about Oozie the purported sea-monster of Funk's Inlet, I didn't know the "backstory" so to speak. But a large entire-front-page story in the Gazette this morning reveals all. Put your coffee down and alert the grey matter. This one has more hairpin curves than the highway between Lillooet and Cayoosh Creek.

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Scandal Erupts!
Sir Enzyme Claims Sea Monster Skeleton a Hoax !

Infamous Cat-Eating 'Oozie' Alleged to be Missing Chicken!

Louella (Busty) Arzenfluffin, of the noted Arzenfluffins of FUNKS INLET, gazed in rapture at what may prove to be conclusive paleontological evidence of the existence of "Oozie", British Columbia's answer to Scotland's "Nessie" and Lake Champlain's "Champy". "It looks like a real sea monster to me!" Ms Arsenfluffin asserted after receiving a letter from Sir Dr. Weistwind Enzyme, Curator of the Lord Primordial Fusty Collection of Curiosities and Antiquities, Museum of Humanities, Victoria, BC,

While experts of the British Columbia Fish & Game Department earlier dismissed the mushed skelton as an amateurish fraud "Looks like a common roadrunner's head & shoulders have been grafted to a buzzard's behind!" scoffed Rodney Fillededown of BC Fish and Game to this reporter only days ago), but many of FUNK's INLETs own claim this to be almost a holy relic, worthy of annointment as a Canadian National Tourist Shrine.

Discovered about 10 years ago among some surplus World War II burlap bags by a local mechanic & practising Shaman, the tiny curiosity resides in the mudroom of the FUNK'S INLET Volunteer Fire & Rescue Hall.

Sir Dr. Weistwind Enzyme, Curator of the Lord Primordial Fusty Collection of Curiosities and Antiquities, Museum of Humanities, Victoria, BC, announced today that DNA examination and radio-carbon dating of the supposed 'conclusive paleoentological evidence' dredged from the mudroom of the Funk's Inlet Volunteer Fire and Rescue Hall, and believed by many Funk Inlet residents to be proof conclusive of the existence of the Inlet's famed but seldom seen sea monster, 'Oozie', is no more than the slightly squashed skeletal remains of a very large chicken.

Funk's Inlet mayor Peter J. Pecksniff, conceded that now that he's had time to think about it, the mixup of the chicken's skeleton with the legend of the 'monster' is possible, seeing that a local resident kept as a watch-fowl and psychic-medium a genetically aberrant featherless rooster named Cacklemeister for a number of years in the '60's. The chicken dissappeared under suspicious circumstances during a box-lunch held in the Fire Hall in 1967.

This same party was supposedly disrupted when the Funk's Inlet amorphous legend 'Oozie' appeared on the doorstep, lured by the fragrance of oolichan grease sandwiches and Big Rock beer. "No one actually *saw* Oozie," the Mayor admits, " but there were a series of unusual noises outside the Hall which the partygoers were too afraid to investigate, and in the morning a two-metre wide slime trail led from the doorstep of the Hall down to the dock."

"When the chicken failed to return from his evening stroll, we all assumed that 'Oozie' had eaten him," the Mayor claims. "And over the years, as the story was retold over a few beers, the skeleton we discovered among the burlap bags in the mudroom the following spring became linked to Oozie. After a few more springs and a few more pints it *became* Oozie.

Perfectly natural mistake," Mr. Pecksniff alledges, staunchly denying that there was any deceptive intent on the part of Funk Inlet's 375 residents. "Oozie is serious business around here," Pecksniff asserts. "Not something we take lightly or joke about. Indeed 'Oozie' ate our beloved founder's favorite cat in 1947! One minute the cat was happily sunning itself on the gun turret of Jack's float plane, the next she had disappeared down the maw of the ferocious sea monster."