Sorry for the delay since the last post, but I've been pretty busy. Mostly I've been consulting teams of lawyers about the information you're about to read. They say it's OK now, so here goes:
Moooog35 guessed it: When I went looking for D.B. Cooper in the woods of Oregon and discovered that he made a nice little Cooper-shaped crater on the forest floor, I also found his ill-gotten loot!
In a moment of greedy, weak, avaricious, selfishness, I took it for myself!
Oh, woe is me! I have been found out! Life can never be the same again! And it's been horrible - Horrible I say! - living a lie all this time! Having to hide in trees whenever a police officer came by! Being forced to read all those books about money laundering! Having to pay huge brokerage fees! Those damn fees really bite you in the shorts!
But let me start at the beginning of this long, sordid tale.
It was 1971 when I found all that D.B. Cooper money, and I had to lie low for a while until the heat died down. In 1972 I figured it was time to do something with that cash, but at the time I knew nothing about high finance. Plus I was a bird, and when you're a bird it's hard to just waltz into a bank or somewhere like that dragging a suitcase full of cash and not draw some suspicion. So I called up one of my best human friends to give me a hand:
Yes, that's Jimmy Buffett, the singing sensation who has brought so much fun to the world in the form of songs like "Margaritaville", "Cheeseburger in Paradise", and "My Head Hurts, My Feet Stink and I Don't Love Jesus" (I swear I did not make that title up). Jimmy, with his well-known affinity for parrots, was more than happy to help me with my money issues. And the advice he gave me was this:
"Baba, my main bird, If you got some extra money, I say keep it in the family! I got this distant relative named Warren who knows all about what to do with money, so I'll get you in touch with him and he'll set you up!"
This is how, in 1972, I came to buy 3,000 shares of Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway stock.
Today these shares sell for about $130,000.
Each.
I'm a bird with dough! My friends don't call me "Greenback Baba" because of the color of my feathers! Having virtually unlimited money is pretty cool - with tons of money, an otherwise ordinary Joe can become anything he wants.
Having nearly unlimited money allowed Bruce Wayne to go from being a loser with a bad attitude to a caped Superhero!
I'm not really the superhero type, so I had to think of something else to do with a huge wad of cash. What does a bird do when he has more money than you can shake a jewel-encrusted stick at?
1) I got lucky.
Oooh, twins!
When it comes to bird nookie, I've tried' em all, from sparrows to spoonbills, wood ducks to warblers - if it could be bought, I bought it. I won't get into the details here (you can all just use your sick, twisted imaginations), but suffice it to say that lovebirds have absolutely nothing on rainbow lorikeets!
Hubba Hubba! Wow, she was in-effin-credible.
I know this sort of behavior is frowned upon today, but all that was back in the '70's when things were pretty crazy. And of all this promiscuity, I can tell you that I really have no egrets. (Ha ha, a little bird humor there.)
2) I Bought a boat
Everybody with scads of cash eventually buys a boat. I got this one in the early 80's, and I thought it was great:
But it was just a little too small, though - I barely had room for a butler on board. So I bought another one:
That's a great boat. But eventually it also turned out to be too small: I could land my helicopter on it, but when I bought an airplane I wanted a boat with a landing strip, so I had to get something bigger:
I haven't bought it yet, but I have my eye on another boat now:
Whaddaya think, too ostentatious?
3) I got some pets for the house
Well, they aren't exactly pets - they're more like employees. This one is Phil, my personal attorney, during some rare downtime (when he's not working on a copyright infringement case or something):
He looks pretty content here. He should for what I pay him.
I figure if people can keep birds in cages in their houses, I can keep humans in cages in my house. Hey, it's only fair! And in case you were wondering, humans, like most birds, don't mind this sort of thing much so long as you pay them well. Unfortunately for me, money is generally the only pay a human will accept, unlike most birds who will take, literally, peanuts.
4) I Started my own company
I figured I'd use my natural talents at mystery solving to fill some of my spare time and help some people out, so I opened the Eagle Eye Detective Agency in the 90's.
Nobody would hire a bird detective, so I had to hire a figurehead human so I could drum up some business.
He said his name was "Norelco Irons", but I'm sure that was an alias. He was pretty suave and talked with an accent, so he was good at shmoozing and doing public appearances, but he was dumb as a bag of rocks and useless on an investigation. All he would do was say some stupid one-liner every now and again and that made him feel like he was contributing. I guess if you don't pay very well you have to take what you can get. Oh well. Live and learn.
I closed the agency after a few years anyway - I figured I could still do mystery solving without having to pay corporate taxes, so that's what I do now.
So there you have it: the mystery of what happened to D.B. Cooper's money, all wrapped up in a neat little package. And now that you know the Truth, don't you be hitting me up for any loans - I'm a cheap bastard. And you can't threaten to turn me in, because the statute of limitations expired years ago (I don't pay all those lawyers for nothing, you know). I think I'll go light a fire in the hearth with some 100-dollar bills now. Have a nice day!