The Cooking Pot
A semi-periodic report on what's happening in the world of internet recipes.
By Arty Dumourier
December 22th, 2007
Cupertino, CA
Half-Squirrel/ Half-Beaver Terrorizes AnyRecipe.com Headquarters;
Spread of Rabies now feared
Upon arrival to the AnyRecipe.com headquarters on August 22, 2007, several
employees were surprised to find that a reported "half -squirrel/ half
-beaver" was tearing apart the office. The apparent half-creature had been
locked in the office for the night and had done massive damage to the web site
based company. Terrell Johnson was one of the handful of employees who walked
in on the beast's destructive rampage.
"Truly it was somewhat amazing." Johnson told The Pot. "You could
tell it had been going at it for hours by the amount of paper it had torn up.
We've must of lost a good six months of work."
"When we had first entered, we all just stood there watching it."
Sandra Hu said later, "It was flying from cubical to cubical. It was like
it was gaining more and more power from each stack of paper it devoured."
An artist's rendition of the beast showing it's inner demons
But bad turned to worst when Johnson and Hu and several other employees attempted
to catch the beast to no prevail. The creature then bit all five of the employees
who attempted to stop it and somehow, all five present employees had no explanation.
It then escaped into the ventilation system overhead where to spend a few more
hours squealing and race back and forth from one side of the building to the
next.
The news spread quickly as the rest of the employees showed up to the headquarters.
Several ambulances had to be called in due to the possibility that the beast
had rabies.
Tensions grew when CFO of AnyRecipe.com, Deren Laterra arrived. Laterra was
seen laughing over the matter and was overheard noting the fact that only minorities
were bitten. After several employees voice their frustration towards Laterra,
he later took a more serious stance on the topic and gave a speech to the office
in the parking lot while animal control tried to entice the half-squirrel/half-beaver
from the ventilation system.
"The rumor that's going around that I supposedly said something about the
squirrel only biting minorities is a…misquote," Laterra said to his
crowd of employees as he stood on the trunk of Penelope Halverson's 1987 Prelude.
"What I was trying to say was perhaps it's against affirmative action."
Many opinions have been voiced on how to handle the beast, ranging from bombing
pesticide inside the entire office to Ed Kaczynski, the recently hired mail
room staff, revealing the elephant shotgun he keeps in his 1976 Pinto.
"Unless that thing has got anything but elephant blood in it, this sucker
can take him down." Kaczynski told The Pot, holding up his gun. "But
I won't know that until I've tasted it."
Laterra soon contacted a zoologist to try to determine the species of the beast
and Dr. Karl Weierstrass, sometimes known as the "father of inter-office
unknown species recognition", came aptly.
"It is with my esteemed experience and history of efficiency that I can
say with confidence that I don't know what the hell we're dealing with,"
Dr. Weierstrass said before leaving. Laterra later contacted The Pot in the
parking lot to further clear his view on the animal incident.
"In a lot of ways the half-squirrel/half-beaver incident here today is
just as devastating as 9/11," Laterra told us from the inside of his 2007
Audi model T. "But instead of New York we have our office, and instead
of two massive planes crashing into two gigantic buildings we have a half-creature
stuck in our ventilation system. But fortunately we haven't had any deaths yet."
But unfortunately, that was also proven inaccurate. As the animal control group
cleaned up the large amount of shredded paper, the body of 67-year-old janitor
Herb Eisen was found. It was later confirmed that Eisen would have been the
last one to lock up the office and was probably caught in a cat and mouse like
struggle for survival with the half-squirrel/half-beaver. The creature had claimed
it's first victim. Laterra had some comments on Eisen's death.
"You know it's funny," Laterra said, "when I first hired Herb
he told me all about how he loved to hunt, and for the last couple of hours
of his life, he was no longer the hunter, but the hunted."
Herb Theodore Eisen
(1940-2007)
We'll always miss your cleaning
Arty Dumourier is a respected and world renowned expert on the internet recipe
industry and can be contacted at info@anyrecipe.com.
Stay tuned for more Chef Paul segments and the launching of AnyRestaurant.com, AnyGolfcourse.com and AnyDentist.com!
"AnyRecipe.com, AnyRestaurant.com, AnyGolfcourse.com & AnyDentist.com
- Come on in, the water's fine!"