Cheney Assigned to French Bird Flu Case

The Vice-President. Other than serving as a vote-getting running mate and casting an occasional tie-breaking vote in the Senate, he has no official duties. So most Vice-Presidents sit on their thumbs and bask in Washington society for either 4 or 8 years. But not Dick Cheney. Rather than waste his time inside the Beltway, he devoted himself to hunting in every state in the country.

It started with just stocked game birds, but soon that didn’t satisfy him, so he moved to the hard stuff – lawyers. Look, he got one!

The President had initially considered sending Cheney off to a hunting cessation program. But that was before he read an article in the New York Times (which he reads in its entirety each morning, often doing the crossword puzzle in pen) about bird flu (usually known as “deadly bird flu”) in France. It seems that bird flu, er, deadly bird flu, is being spread through various means, one of which is via infected migratory birds. And now these birds have brought the disease to France, where 400 turkeys were felled.

This is of grave concern to the French, due to the proximity of this outbreak to the Bresse region, where the capons and the free-range chickens roam. Let’s put it this way – the only two things that could be more devastating to France would be if:

1. Grapevine virus killed all the vines in the Champagne region, or
2. The "Replace French with English" virus struck and the French all turned into Lance Armstrong and ordered Freedom Fries with their steaks.

President Bush, never the guy to shy away from improving relations with our allies, seized the opportunity for the Veep to redeem himself. He has asked Cheney to head up a new agency called the “American Delegation of Duck Hunters” (ADD Hunters) and to lead American hunters in the sporting pursuit of infected French pintails.

The French, as well as the American Bar Association, have agreed to this arrangement in principle, as long as the only live ammo is in the hands of Cheney’s hunting companions. That's a plan we can all live with.