My grandfather grew up in a small town.

His best friend, Roy, was known around town for having an adventurous streak that a small town just couldn't satisfy. Roy yearned to travel the world, to rub shoulders with the well-to-do, and to squeeze every drop of excitement he could out of life. While most young folk in town, my grandpa included, were resigned to their lot, Roy was driven by his dream. He worked incredibly hard, taking every hired-hand and handy-man job he could find. He would walk five miles each way to clean a gutter if there was a nickel to be made. His hometown was always spotless, because Roy would pick up every glass bottle he saw to get the deposit back, and every can he found would get turned in for recycling.

The years stretched on. Grandpa settled down with his high school sweetheart in a one-room cottage and had my dad, and not much else. Roy kept hurrying from one job to the next, never spending a dime on a date. Everyone would just roll their eyes and quietly gossip about how poor Roy's obsession was robbing him of a real life.

One day, Roy showed up at Grandpa's house, all decked out in a brand new khaki safari kit, complete with helmet, binoculars, and elephant gun, and announced that he had finally saved up enough for passage to Africa to go big game hunting. He was especially proud of the fine leather boots he was sporting. "Indestructable" he called them, totally impenetrable to water, wind, and snow. No trench-foot for him while he tracked rhinos on the savannah!

Grandpa congratulated Roy on his achievement and wished him bon voyage. Over the next three months, the town felt Roy's absence. Litter lay where it fell, gutters overflowed in heavy rain, small-time farmers rose that bit earlier and bedded that bit later to cover the work Roy used to help with. Of course, the gossipers just turned their chat from how Roy needed a dose of reality to how thoughtless it was of him to just up and leave. Most folks were convinced Roy was gone for good. After all, how could he come back from such a high-falutin' adventure to his tiny, no-account hometown?

But return Roy did, and everyone crowded around at the bar to hear his account of his safari. To their surprise, Roy told them that, for all the time he had been away, he only bagged one trophy that was currently on a slow boat back. It turned out, once Roy got a close-up look at the elephants, rhinos, giraffes, gazelles, and all the fine animals of the African savannah, he lost all heart for hunting. He just couldn't imagi

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📅︎ Feb 12 2022
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Regarding the diets of dairy cows.

I grew up in Vermont. Around my town were plenty of dairy farms, inviting the always wonderful manure aroma. An aroma that nearly forced my father to inhale deeply through his nose, saying, "Ah, fresh Vermont air!"

That's an excellent Dad one liner, as are most dad jokes, but he had another great one that I'm getting to.

You see, the hay bails we saw growing up in Vermont were mostly the cube variety. Hay bailing technology at the time created cubes of hay, so that's what dotted the fields they'd graze in.

As we grew older, we starting noticing the now more common round bails of hay. Dad was not pleased.

I asked him what the problem was or, at least, what his problem was with the round bails. The best jokes are set up when you ask for them.

So, he tells me. New farming technology allowed the round bails to be created more efficiently. They used less fuel in the bailers, took less passes on the field to gather the hay. They used less twine, and even though they didn't fill a truck as well as square bails, there was still a net monetary gain from the efficiency gained elsewhere.

However, studies were done on the bails. The cows approached them differently due to the different alignment of surface area. The way the rain hit the bails and rolled off as opposed to soaking in leached nutrients out of the hay. Some cows even mistook the shape of bail for another animal, and approached them so nervously that their heart rates were known to raise significantly; such a rate that a tinge of acidity could be tasted by those in the know in their milk.

What all of this amounted to... is that with the new round bails of hay, the cows just weren't getting a good square meal.

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👤︎ u/estomasi
📅︎ Sep 06 2013
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