fluttering butterflies

Washington--In a late Friday press release, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said it could not declare the Miami Blue butterfly an endangered species because it had determined that blue origami butterflies could adequately cover the need for blue fluttery things in the wild.

Earlier, a controversy erupted because of accusations that the Fish and Wildlife Service had deliberately minimized the success of a University of Florida reintroduction program in order to make it appear that it would be too difficult to save the butterfly.

Tom MacKenzie, spokesman for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said "we were all kinda sitting around wondering how best to spin this latest bit of clear evidence the Bush administration is poliiticizing science when it occurred to us that if we can count swimming hotdogs as wild salmon in the Northwest, why not declare flying bits of paper as butterflies in the Southeast?"