The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

I got a call from our commissioner today. No, not to ask me for advice on how to better run the county government which you might expect, but to let me know my April Fool column in the Crab Cracker sent multiple citizens to their phones to ascertain if Google was actually planning to build a Data Center up on the north end. She was getting hair-on-fire demands to call them back ASAP. If this was true, they needed to get hold of a realtor and sell as soon as possible before the Googleites sucked dry their water and sent electric bills through their roofs. Time was of the essence and panic was starting to spread.

Our commissioner called various agencies inquiring about any permits for future gigantic projects but no one had heard a peep. Calls kept coming in, calls were going out. Finally, when one of the panicked citizens called for the second or third time, she asked where had he gotten this information and was told the Crab Cracker, which, when she consulted with someone in her office, was told it was the April Fool’s edition. Mystery solved, egg wiped off irate faces.

She called to tell me I had really wound up the gullible but she was laughing when she told me. I said you’ve made my day. Every year it gets harder to slip a ‘gotcha’ into the April Fool edition that can actually fool anyone. I mean, it says right on the cover in capital letters APRIL FOOL’S DAY EDITION and half the bogus articles and photos are obviously meant as a lark. In the past other commissioners have received irate calls over my ‘news coverage’, everything from naming the new bridge onto the island the Colton Harris Moore Bridge after our infamous Barefoot Bandit to the proposed Growler Navy Base landing field to be sited at our little airport. Or the 100 acre new landfill down here near the Head. And the coming WalMart soon to arrive at the Tyee Store location. Not to mention, but I will, the Snohomish Planning Department’s decision to solve congestion in Stanwoodopolis by digging a 4 lane tunnel underneath the city.

You might think the recipient of readers’ anger would be me, and occasionally it is, like the woman who was tremendously upset to learn WalMart was not coming to her neck of the woods after all, but for the most part their ire is directed toward the Commissioners. Which, of course, explains why I have decided to forego running for that office. Although … there was the time Skeeter did throw his hat in the ring. The commissioner who lost that election that year by a few crummy votes blamed it on me for siphoning off his votes to my write-in. Some people just have too few funny bones, I guess.