Blast from the Past

Howdy again all you powerlifters doing the clean-and-jerk of Truth! Baba Doodlius here, with a Revelation of another Mystery of the Universe!

I've got a Mystery Revelation this week that should have been taken care of a long time ago. It's one that goes back only 36 years, but it's one of those things that people dredge up off the bottom of the Great Cosmic Mystery Pile (GCMP*) every now and again and try to make a big deal of. And somebody did it again just the other day. I'm so tired of this one that I'm going to Reveal to all of you once and for all the Real Truth behind the Mystery of


D. B. Cooper!


If you've been reading the news lately, you may have seen that The F.B.I., that famous Institute of Mystery Solvers in the U.S. of A., has re-opened the 36-year-old case file of the infamous skyjacker known as D.B. Cooper, the only skyjacking in the history of the sky that has never been solved. Apparently the F.B.I. is once again admitting that this Mystery has them stumped.

So here's the whole story, in case you have forgotten it:

A guy calling himself Dan Cooper (later known as "D.B.") hijacked a plane out of Portland, Oregon, USA in November 1971, and demanded $200,000 USD and four parachutes. These being delivered to him, he ordered that the plane take off and head for Reno, Nevada (of all places). Once in the air, he strapped on a parachute and left the plane somewhere over Oregon with his bag of cash. The F.B.I. has been looking for him ever since.


Here's the composite sketch of D.B. Cooper. Yeah, I know, that could be any balding, non-descript, goofy white guy.

A couple of people have claimed to be D.B. Cooper during deathbed confessions, and the F.B.I. has had oodles of suspects, but nobody has ever been able to prove what happened after D.B. took his famous flying leap.

Apparently the F.B.I. is still looking, because they came out with a press release about ol' D.B. just a few days ago. Well, I'm sick of this Mystery cropping back up over and over. And, since I am the Great and Powerful Baba Doodlius and I happen to know exactly what happened to D.B. Cooper, I'm going to settle this once and for all, right now.

So here's the real story:


I am a bird, and birds are flight-capable (most of us, anyway - sorry to rub it in, Opus).

In case you were wondering, Berkeley Breathed does not know that I used this copyrighted picture of Opus the Penguin in this blog, and if he did I'm fairly certain he'd tell me to cut it the heck out.

So, when in 1971 I heard about all these D.B. Cooper schenanagins, I figured I'd check it all out for myself. Being a decent flyer, I went to Oregon and followed the route of D.B.'s plane. Nearabouts where he abandoned ship, I started looking around. After a short while I saw this scene:



Now that may not look like much to you, but I'm a bird with a great pair'o'peepers, so I saw exactly the evidence I was looking for. I'll zoom in a little so you can see what I'm talking about:



See that little mud puddle in the middle of all those trees? I'll zoom in one more time:



So there you have it. D.B. Cooper may have made quite an impression on the American psyche, but he made an even bigger impression on the mud of rural Oregon. Yep, the chute didn't open and D.B. went splat. No more mystery, F.B.I., so you can stop looking.

And the money, you ask? Well, uh, nobody ever found the money. Certainly not me. No way! And $200,000 wouldn't have bought that much bird food anyway, or a nice camera, or a house in the suburbs, or a really rollicking night with Betty Bluebird... uh, where was I? Oh, right, nobody ever found the money!



* - Great Cosmic Mystery Pile and GCMP copyright 2008, Baba Doodlius, all rights reserved