“What’s That?! Someone in a Space Suit Is Leaving the Eliza Ann!”

The Amok Amoeba

    Future historians looking back on 1960 doubtless will make a footnote on April 19, the day of the great L.A. amoeba quest.  It started innocently enough.  Bruce Hayes, early morning KFWB broadcaster, reported an amoeba was amok near the Civic Center and a search was under way. 

    Now anyone who has taken even elementary zoology in school knows an amoeba is a microscopic, one-celled animal, actually a shapeless, harmless blob.

    BUT SWITCHBOARDS lit up all over town.  Literal-minded people somehow got the idea, as other fun-loving KFWB announcers carried on the joke during the day, that the berserk amoeba was a cross between Godzilla and Mighty Joe Young.

    Of course, many persons joined in the gag, reporting sightings.  A woman in Wilmington  said she'd trapped it in her fish pond.  It was seen hopping fences in Gardena.  Members of the Encino Mulch Society claimed to have captured it.  It was observed near Santa Barbara, heading north.  But there was some genuine concern.