NEWTON'S LAW: MISSOURI IS NEEDING A BREAK FROM TIRESOME RUN OF RUMORS

No one wants to hear the word said or see it written now that the non-event - you know, E-Day - has passed. It was a bad dream, like Bobby Ewing stepping from a shower, not dead but refreshed and squeaky clean. We'll forget we bathed ourselves in anxiety.

Never shall the New Mexican's name - what was it again? - be used in scorn or reverence. The only predictions we'll prize from now on will be on the Super Bowl or Final Four pools.

New Madrid has had its 15 minutes of fame. It will go back to more parochial notoriety as breeder of the biggest mosquitoes on the planet. (When I was a boy in New Madrid, visitors would often mistake the shadows thrown by these insects for a solar eclipse.)

And rumors? We tapped our year's quota and entered the red zone long before December came. Those concerning the ... uh, you know, the "shake thing," were particularly wild and cumbersome.

Folks were seeing rivers gurgling and angels hitchhiking and Dan Rather lunching at the New Madrid Chat 'N' Chew. (Or was it Dan Rather gurgling, or Dan Rather hitchhiking? I forget.)

Okay, so I was exaggerating on the rumors ... not on the content, mind you, but their nature. Like congressional spending, there is no lid on rumors. Also like congressional spending, their proliferation boggles the mind.

Rumors are pesky as weeds and grow fast as you pluck them. A newspaper is stuck for a good means of eradication: ignore them and they spread as though true, debunk them in print and be accused of lending them credence.

They are tough rascals to deal with.

The Missouri Department of Conservation knows. The agency has just gone public with a disclaimer to a bit of gossip that has been hanging around for several years.

The story goes that Missouri, as part of its wildlife release program, has been trading creatures with other states. This is a common conservation arrangement: animals that are abundant here are swapped for critters that aren't so plentiful.

Over the years, Missouri has come into a number of river otters, ruffed grouse and ring-necked pheasants in this way.

A rumor has festered, however, that Missouri has made a deal to trade some of the state's wild turkeys, of which there are many, for rattlesnakes, of which there is a declining Missouri population.

Moreover, the rumor has it that the conservation folks are supposed to release the snakes by dropping them into rugged terrain from airplanes.

A news release was distributed from the agency recently decrying the whole thing. No turkeys, no snakes, no trade. Don't bet it will squelch the rumor.

While we often take officials in Jefferson City to task for offbeat decisions, our threshold for absurdity does not extend to believing they would be cutting deals to trade turkeys for rattlesnakes.

Beyond that, we would hope that herpetologists on the state payroll would not believe that rattlesnakes could survive a free fall from an airplane or, worse, that they could fly.

Let's hope the conservation department is successful in putting this rumor to rest. Missouri needs a break from these sorts of worries.

If people of the eastern half of the state became concerned about a climatologist's tidal theory, just think how the idea of raining rattlesnakes would affect them.