May 21st Doomsday Turns into Profit for Atheist Pet-Sitter

If you believe the preachings of Family Radio founder Harold Camping, there are only 3 shopping days left until The Rapture.

Camping claims to have deciphered the Bible’s secret code and determined that The Rapture will occur on May 21, 2011.  This will be followed a few months later by the Earth’s fiery destruction on October 21, 2011.

So, if you happen to be one of the lucky ones who gets sucked up to heaven, where does that leave your pets?

Bart Centre has you covered for the low, low price of just $135.

Centre is profiting from all this Armageddon hoopla in a very creative way.

“I’m not looking to make a statement here,” said Centre, 62, an atheist author and founder of Eternal Earth-Bound Pets. “I’m looking to make money.”

The fledgling company, which he admits has seen a boost in profits thanks to Camping’s May 21st Doomsday hysteria, sells 10-year contracts to protect pets from “a slow death by starvation in the event that you get raptured.”

“A lot of people send us hate mail, saying we’re godless heathens and we may want to eat their pets – or have sex with their pets,” Centre said from his New Hampshire home.

This is just not true, he says.  Eternal Earth-Bound Pets employs dozens of rescuers, and all of them have passed a criminal background check.  They will retrieve your pets within 24 hours of the Rapture and “keep them as their own family members.

“We have the infrastructure to make it happen,” said Centre, author of “The Atheist Camel Chronicles”. “We plot out the clients per rescuer so they can make the complete circuit of pickups within a 24-hour period.”

The company, which opened its doors two years ago in response to all that Mayan calendar, December 21, 2012 panic, has 258 clients in 26 states. Centre says Harold Camping’s prognostications of impending doom have been good for business.

“Can’t hurt,” Centre said.

Potential clients frequently ask how they can be assured that Eternal Earth-Bound Pets will hold up its end of the bargain should the Rapture take place within the 10-year contract period. Centre offers his word, but also offers some advice.

“We suggest they appoint a Jew or Hindu or Muslim or pagan friend of theirs and give them post-Rapture power of attorney,” Centre said.

OK, fine, but what if the potential rescuers get raptured as well?

Not possible, he says. They’re all atheists.  Just to be sure, they’ve all committed blasphemy “to one degree or another” in accordance with Mark 3:29, which states that blasphemy as an unforgivable sin.

“They ain’t gonna go nowhere,” he said.