New York, New York, New York, New York - Scientists in Kobe, Japan have revealed they have successfully cloned a dead mouse, frozen for the past 16 years. It marks the first time tissue taken from a dead mammal has been successfully cloned to form a new live replica.
Officials at Disney are jubilant at the dead mouse cloning news.
"Wow! That's great," exclaimed Scrooge McDuck, head of cartoon casting at Disney. "Now we won't have to hire all those spotty high school and college kids to dress up as Mickey Mouse and pay them sub-minimum wage to meet and greet visitors at our attractions. We'll just clone the original Mouse."
"Luckily old Walt Disney was a real pack rat and never threw anything away," added McDuck. "I'm sure I saw that dead mouse frozen in an ice cube tray in a fridge on our back lot. I'll send Huey, Dewey and Louie to find it."
Japanese scientist, Dr Mousie Mousie explained the complicated science involved in their successful experiments to bring a dead mouse back to life through cloning.
"We knew we would need to try many replications with thousands or even millions of dead mice in order to succeed," explained Dr Mousie Mousie, nibbling on Japanese cheesebits rice crackers.
"Luckily we have a senior scientist on our team who himself was cloned from Walt Disney, and he never throws anything away. So we have freezers full of dead mice that he has collected over the years."
Dr Mousie Mousie continued, several long hairs on his wispy moustache twitching. "So the next step was to bake the dead mice into hotdog buns and sell them commercially in food stores all over the world."
"We hypothesized that a certain percentage of people, around 15%, buying hotdog buns with dead mice in them might not eat them and might throw them into the garbage."
"As it turned out, only around 10% of the hotdog buns with dead mice in them were actually thrown out into the garbage, but we still got the results we needed."
Dr Mousie Mousie explained the next step in their complicated experimentation. "So then we just waited for rodents to raid the trash cans at night and find and eat the discarded hotdog buns with our dead mice in them."
"As half of the hungry mice were females, they got impregnated with the genes from the dead mice in the hotdog buns as we had treated their bodies with special cloning chemicals that would find their way into the host mice wombs."
"Three weeks later, litters of Frankenmice were born. I just love science, and mice, and hotdogs," added Dr Mousie Mousie, squirting wasabi mustard onto a Frankenmouse baked into a fresh bun."
The scientific community has stated that with the Japanese dead mouse breakthrough, cloning could theoretically resurrect other dead mammals, including woolly mammoths frozen for millions of years in the last ice age and perhaps humans.
Rumours abound that whilst the Vatican publically has gone on record against cloning humans on moral and ethical grounds, it is secretly sponsoring a massive cloning project deep in the catacombs outside Rome.
Sister Maria Doppio, a leading evangelical figure, has alleged that the Vatican is conducting clandestine cloning experiments using relics of deceased saints.
According to Sister Doppio, Vatican scientists are attempting to clone St Sebastian, whose head has been kept at a church in Rome for centuries since his martyrdom.
"Yes, it's true, I am now carrying the cloned foetus of St Sebastian," confessed Sister Doppio. "I was honoured to be chosen by the Vatican for this blessed vocation. We shall know in a few months if it is successful."
Sister Doppio added to her credibility by saying, "The cloning procedure was painful, but not half as bad as those probes the aliens did during my last abduction. Anyway, that's behind me now. I look forward to bringing St Sebastian back to life. I can't wait to take him to the Santi Quattro Incoronati church so he can see his own head."
Vatican officials have distanced themselves from Sister Maria Doppio's claims that she is carrying the cloned foetus of St Sebastian.
"That woman's a nutcase," insisted Vatican spokesperson Father M Mouse. "Last year it was alien abductions responsible for her twins. The year before that it was the ghost of Elvis fathering triplets. This year it's St Sebastian. The next thing you know, she'll probably claim she's been adopted by a bishop. She's just a nut."
