A New Peachy-Keen Fabric
By Robert P. Herbst 

            Today the minions of Mount Perry’s fabric manufacturing industry were amazed to learn of a new fabric recently introduced by the Mount Perry Peach Growers Association. The fabric manufacturing industry has announced the production of a brand new fabric made from a genetically altered peach fuzz. The peach is outwardly like any other peach, except Dr. Gene Splicer has combined this peach’s genes with sheep genes. The result is a long-haired peach that needs to be shaved before it’s marketed. This is a great improvement over the short-haired normal peach people have complained bitterly about.

            The Mount Perry Peach Growers Association goes on to talk about the production of their new fabric: Once shaved, the new peach is quite smooth and has no trace of fuzz on it. It looks almost like a nectarine, except for the traces of shaving cream left on the skin.

            The shaved hair is collected and baled for shipment to the Mount Perry Wool Weaving Mill for cleaning, carding, and eventually weaving into a fabric vastly superior to wool because it does not shrink in hot water.

            There are still a few problems yet to be ironed out:

            Finding people experienced in shearing sheep who are willing to be cross trained to shave peaches. Peaches are a Fall crop here and this conflicts with the Spring wool crop in Australia, where the seasons are six months reversed and their Spring is at the same time we experience Fall. It had been hoped much that the peach shearing manpower would come from Australia, but with this time difference, it would not work out very well..

            Moving the collected peaches through the shearing process and on to the storage shed without damaging the skin and allowing the sweet peach juice to contaminate the wool before it is harvested is a recognized difficulty. If the peach juice were allowed to flow into the peach hair and dry, the entire harvest might become one huge solid lump requiring many hours of washing to remove the dried juice. This, of course, depends a great deal on the ability of the person doing the shearing. Amateurs tend to be too rough on the peaches and damage the skin.

            Last but not least, keeping the peach shearers from eating the freshly sheared peaches and thus diluting the profitability of the operation is a problem only recently discovered. The problem was not apparent when they were shearing sheep, possibly because someone picking up a freshly sheared sheep and biting into it would have been noticed immediately. Biting into a freshly sheared peach could easily be hidden from view and the problem was only noticed because of a growing pile of peach pits just outside the door to the shed.

            The Mount Perry Peach Growers Association has mentioned the incident of people purloining hairy peaches from the orchard is nearly non existent as the long peach hair tends to get stuck in the perpetrators teeth and they are easily recognized.

            In his continuing efforts to produce double yield crops, Dr. Splicer is hard at work on hairy Plums, Nectarines, Cherries, and other large seeded fruits. A hairy Mango is not expected in the foreseeable future.

            At about the same time, this story appeared in the Mount Perry Newspaper and Fish Wrap, ”about an unfortunate incident involving the accidental stripping of a female M.P.I.A. (Mount Perry Intelligence Agent), which resulted in a criminal investigation of the Mount Perry Peach Growers Association.”
The M.P.I.A. reports that the female operative was ordered to volunteer for the testing of a suit made entirely of Peach Hair. In the interest of M.P.I.A. security, the agent's name will not be disclosed. As a result of this unfortunate incident, the female agent is suing the Mount Perry Peach Growers Association. At this moment, the courts are not able to award anything to the secret agent until her name is disclosed and the details of the case made public.

            Recent events clarifying the situation in the M.P.I.A. story:

In late breaking news, an unconfirmed report that leaked from the M.P.I.A. by an unnamed source has alleged one of their secret female operatives supposedly wore a peach fuzz suit out on an investigation. According to this unconfirmed report, the operative was allegedly attacked by hoards of Peach Borer Moths and Wool Lice. The insects stripped the peach fuzz wool from her body and left her standing naked at the corner of Jefferson Street and Green Street in the very center of Mount Perry. Fortunately, it was a secret agent and she was not visible to the public. Unfortunately, she was quite visible to everyone at the M.P.I.A.
However, the identity of the secret agent is still guarded by M.P.I.A. sources. When asked, the M.P.I.A. will say only that "the records are lost somewhere in our secret headquarters and we have no idea who the heck she is."

            This unfortunate incident is not expected to happen again as all future clothing manufactured from peach wool will be liberally laced with a strong pesticide. This should effectively solve the problem, after the first washing however, you’re on your own.

            Naturally, before release of the new improved product, it will be necessary to find a female test subject willing to wear a peach wool outfit out in public. After the release of the above story, volunteers have suddenly become extremely hard to find.

Contact Robert P. Herbst 

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