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Friday, January 04, 2008

The One About the Crow


My rabbits like the one about the crow, so I have to tell it over and over. "Tell the one about the crow," they pester (I think it is a "clamor of crows" and a "pester of rabbits"). So, because it is New Year, and my heart is broken, here is the one about the crow:

Suppose you wake up one morning and go fetch a gunny sack and a snare. You wander off to the mountain, set the snare, and by dint of mischief, you catch a crow. You chuck the crow into the gunny sack, and hike down to the docks, where you board a ship and set sail.

The ship sails out to the middle of the ocean, so you remove the crow from the gunny sack, untangle his feet from the snare, and back off.

The crow takes one look at you -- probably it is a disgusted look -- and then he flies away.

Flying upwards, the crow realizes that the sky is empty. Flying back down, the space between where it stopped and where it goes is empty. Flying in all directions, it finds no place to go, no place to land.

So the crow returns to the same ship and lands there.