EAST KEENE – The Water St. Market has sold out of boxed wine.

Used CD stores are reporting an unforeseen demand for soft hit compilations of the 1980’s and Patrick Swayze movie soundtracks.

West Keene babysitters are borrowing their family SUVs to make the ice-laden trek into the borough at staggering rates.

“Love's in the air!” declares Surgeon Colonel Reggie Keothane from behind this local couple as he gently observes them 'have at it' in the Valley Green.

Earlier this week, the East Keene Surgeon Colonel released a report stating that it is in all honestly way too cold for children to be conceived, and coital-based merchants couldn’t be happier.

“I know it’s been a cold winter,” said Betty Kennedy, captain of the West Keene Academy soccer and lacrosse teams. “But it hasn’t paid this well to be a babysitter since those quintuplets were sold to the circus.”

The report, distributed heavily beneath area windshield wipers, surprised all but the man who folded them.

“Before you call me crazy,” Surgeon Colonel Reggie Keothane told the Herald, “you must remember we’re talking about East Keene. The fertility rate here has been teetering on the edge for decades, and this abnormally cold winter was the natural influence required to render all men and women completely barren.”

Added the Colonel, “Any drastic form of nature could’ve done the trick. Earthquake, tsunami, plague of locusts, oh yeah. Even if it rained frogs, we were due.”

Not that anybody’s complaining, especially the ugly. As for fears that the last generation of East Keene natives has graced the earth, the rumors remain unfounded.

“Fertility is a fragile beast,” assures Keothane. “It can be regained by anything from the return of spring, to standing in front of an old microwave, to voting. Of course, that’s just personal experience.”

This spring the Office of the Surgeon Colonel will be releasing statistics on the health benefits of whaling as well as their annual how-to kit of East Keene genealogy.