Tom Keith RIP

I got the news on tonight's Prairie Home Companion.  Tom was the sound effects guy on PHC.  I don't think it strange that I miss someone I never met, but who's work I heard every weekend.  I'll never hear a chicken cluck, a wapiti's mournful cry, or pterodactyl screech again without thinking of Tom.

Tom's passing will probably be the end of the annual Radio Sound Effects Championship which always ended with Tom's challenger being disqualified for hiding a whistle in his nostril.  One part of the contest featured 10 sound effects in 30 seconds.  From 2008 this included a helicopter, a swarm of bees, a flying goose, a knife thrown into a door, a firecracker, a tennis match, a cantaloupe falling from a great height, a giant sneeze (SNEEZE, BELL), an incoming rocket, and arrows shot from a quiver and landing in a bowl-full of lime jello.