Riplee’s wiped out by, sued over swine flu*

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

By PJH Staff

Jackson Hole, Wyo.-Alex McKinnock said he simply wanted to make his business more appealing, but when he imported a deadly virus for display at his Riplee’s Believe it or Else franchise in downtown Jackson, he effectively spelled out its doom.

Riplee’s Believe it or Else is closing, and now faces a $12 million, class-action lawsuit over an outbreak of swine flu in Chicago. The strain he engineered for display infected no one in Jackson Hole, but was carried to Chicago by a family that was visiting here. The strain may be responsible for 127 cases recently reported, there, and untold unreported cases, a spokesperson from the Centers for Disease Control said.

A child who was visiting McKinnock’s franchise stuck his hand inside the aquarium where the virus was living, incubated it on an airplane and spread it throughout Chicago. McKinnock called the exposure a “business move gone wrong.”

 “We have a wax cast of the largest human hand in the world, and a display that describes how the worlds largest ball of earwax was created, but nothing contemporary and exciting that people can relate to,” McKinnock said. “I knew that if we were going to compete with Reba, we’d need something more popular than her. Nothing today is more popular than swine flu.”

McKinnoc was threatened by the opening of JH: Just the Facts, a docudrama about the history of Jackson Hole, which stars Reba Mack and will play at the Gartersnake Theater this summer. McKinnock was afraid that the movie would cut into his profits, since it was more regionally relevant than his store.

McKinnock, who studied biochemistry in college, flew to Mexico to contract the virus and isolated it in a beaker before he treated himself with Tamiflu shots he had stolen from the Teton free clinic one week prior. He spliced the virus with fruit fly DNA so it would last longer underneath the intense light of a high-powered microscope.

Local authorities were flabbergasted that the virus was on display at Riplee’s, but would not comment on how exactly the virus went unnoticed for at least 10 days before they were contacted by public health officials from Chicago. PJH

* This story is fictional and meant for entertainment purposes only.

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Riplee’s wiped out by, sued over swine flu* | Planet JH News Article: Flipside

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