In
the financially-bloated and hyperspeed world of international animal trading,
a world in which jumping spider monkeys and redfaced macaroons are viewed
only as dollar signs, and giant mouse lemurs only as profit, the name of
the Ralph A. Bennett Teasdale Corporation has sunk below the disreputable.
It has come to symbolize the very essence of shoddy and underhanded
dealings, to represent all that is sleazy and unwholesome. All those
decent folk who simply want to use animals for legitimate purposes have
been repeatedly shocked by stories of backroom bargains and long harrowing
ocean voyages, flights on planes with improperly-functioning navigational
equipment, cages without sufficient ventilation and not nearly enough bananas.
Is there anywhere a twirpy teen or a grizzled grandmother who has
not heard the name of the Ralph A. Bennett Teasdale Corporation from the
hysterically-bleating and ill-mannered newsdogs of the local Daily Describer?
Is there anywhere a primatologist who doesn't wince when someone happens
to mention the name of Dr. Peter Pan Troglodytes, President-in-Chief, or
a hard-eyed sheriff who doesn't get misty at the thought of the Nooz's
former owners, the Foundation for the Preservation of Law and Order and
the Study of Primatology?
Now, suddenly, we're stopped in our tracks. We're dead in the water, hanging by our thumbs, and looking around at our friends and colleagues in astonishment. All the charges against the Ralph A. Bennett Teasdale Corporation have been dropped, and we here at Primate Nooz, from the slowest-moving and dullest-witted copyboy to the mightiest editor and even up to publisher Arnett Putney, III, and executive editor Widen Lundale, Jr., have been forced to bite our collective lips.
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