Vol. 89,  No. 8
  Hellmouth,  Arizona
  Dec. 10,  1989
 
STILL FREE
 
   
 
        Hellmouth high society was reeling today in the
wake of last weekend's horrible disclosure about the
death of Basil, the world's last and only bleary-eyed
baboon.  Primate Nooz reported last April that Basil
had died at Beijing's Thousand Uplifting Sentiments
Zoo, but what the Nooz did not report, what indeed
its parent company, the Ralph A. Bennett Teasdale
Corp., has been seeking to cover up, is that Basil
actually died at the Hellmouth Human Diseases and
Primate Testing Facility after an experimental and
highly-risky not to say painful reconstructive surgical
procedure designed to alter his features to make him
look more like a giant pygmy chimpanzee.
        Reporters from Primate Nooz have tried several
times to contact Dr. Doody in hopes of getting his
side of the story, but it appears that he is holed up in
his Nooz office, hard at work on his popular column
“Dr. Doody's Cutting Corner,” and has so far rebuffed
all attempts to question him.  However, an inside
anonymous source named Reeves Slaughterhouse,
who assisted Dr. Doody with the ethically-unsound
operation, has confirmed all the major details in an
exclusive interview which he gave to Nooz senior
staff writers Hugh Underhouse and Millicent
Minniwell.
 
        According to Slaughterhouse, a young intern
only recently out of medical school in Mexico, Basil
was secretly shipped from Beijing to Los Angeles on
a Gabon Airways flight in January of 1988, then trans-
ported by truck to Hellmouth, where he was forcibly
placed in a musty 2'x2'x3' cage with not nearly enough
bananas.  Slaughterhouse told the Nooz reporters
that he has evidence that publisher Arnett Putney, III
and executive editor Widen Lundale, Jr. knew all
along about the series of operations, but he is afraid
to release it because they have threatened him.  He
said that he believes that the Nooz higher-ups are
hoping for a major scoop on a breakthough in medical
technology, and are apparently willing to overlook
the impropriety of this risky procedure.
        Dr. Doody was also involved recently in the
near-death of Sir Barclay Buffum and the supposedly
accidental decapitation of a French fiddler monkey,
and it was only after intense public pressure was
brought to bear on the Human Diseases and Primate
Testing Facility that he was suspended from his
duties as Chief Surgeon in the Primate Pathology
Department.  Doody has also been implicated in the
fatal cryogenic freezing of Nooz editor and author
Win Wing Wan.
 

 GIANT SPACE PRIMATE
 APPARENTLY HEADING
 TOWARD THE EARTH!

(BBC World Service)  Mole Creek, Tasmania.  In what is
surely one of the most startling announcements ever from
Down Under, Drs. Mawbanna Waddamana and Basil
Smith claimed this week to have intercepted a signal of
some kind from outer space or at least outer Tasmania,
which indicates that for some unguessed-at reason from
some unknown location there is some sort of giant
creature, probably a type of otherworldly primate,
heading directly toward the Earth or somewhere near it.
The fractious pair of veteran monkey-watchers was using
the 36" telescope at the Chudleigh-Lilydale Royal
Tasmanian Primatological Observatory last Tuesday
when their computer registered a tiny anomaly.  The
normally imperturbable Dr. Waddamana immediately
called for a mug and a pot of hot, steaming, black
Tasmanian tea, from which he sipped in obvious agitation
while the delicate equipment was being checked over by
Dr. Smith.
      The signal stopped after a few minutes, but not
before Dr. Smith had analysed its contents and managed
to snap a single grainy photograph.  Against the advice
and better judgement of Dr. Waddamana, he called the
editor of the Mole Creek Monitor with the exciting news
that something is moving in our direction, and in all
likelihood it is possibly a previously-undiscovered type
of giant space-dwelling primate.
      “This is obviously a stunning development,” said Dr.
Waddamana while puffing thoughtfully on a large pipeful
of nauseatingly-smelly Tasmanian tobacco, “and we
certainly don't know what to make of it at this point.
However, we are watching the situation as closely as we
can.”  Dr. Smith has remained uncharacteristically silent
since the find.  The Australian Air Defense Command has
sent a team to Mole Creek to verify the find and seal off
the area.  The team should arrive in a few weeks.  Lt. Gen.
 
Lt. Gen. Farley P. Brisbane Wollonggong of the
AADC stated that the Australian government
definitely considers the creature to be a major
threat and has promised that it will take whatever
precautions would seem to be necessary to
counter it.  It is not known yet how long it will be
before the space-travelling primate enters into
Australian airspace, but citizens are already
being warned to be on the lookout for it.
 
 The single photo taken by Dr. Basil Smith of the
 strange craft approaching Earth and carrying
 what  appears to be some kind of space ape.
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