Barren women continue to trek to the lobby of Ripley's Believe It Or Not's corporate offices in Orlando, FL to receive the fecund blessings of a pair of African fertility totems on display there. If the statues are rubbed in the right way, issue are issued. Even couriers and delivery persons have reported they were unexpectedly expecting. At last count, 263 babies have been so conceived.

The statues recently went on a world pregancy-inducement tour, before returning to Orlando -- along with many of the new mothers and the children for which the statues are responsible. The glorious flowering was celebrated at a media buffet last month at the Orlando branch of the Believe It Or Not! Museums.

Vanessa Katz of Orlando says she spent "two-and-a-half years and thousands of dollars" trying to get pregnant, and within three months of hobnobbing with the totems, she was. "Diane" had tried for five years and within a month and a half of her Ripley's visit, she was pregnant with the now three-month-old Levi.

One statue is of a woman with a baby, and the other is of a man with a large penis. [03/31/1997]