John, the farmer, was in the fertilized egg business. He had several
hundred young layers (hens), also called 'pullets,' and ten roosters,
whose job it was to fertilize the eggs. The farmer kept records, and any
rooster that didn't perform went into the soup pot and was replaced.
That took an awful lot of his time, so he bought a set of tiny bells and
attached them to his roosters. Each bell had a different tone so John
could tell from a distance which rooster was performing.
Now he could sit on the porch and fill out an efficiency report simply
by listening to the bells.
The farmer's favorite rooster was old Butch, a very fine specimen. But
on this particular morning, John noticed old Butch's bell hadn't rung at
all.
John went to investigate. The other roosters were chasing pullets all
over the place with bells-a-ringing. The pullets, upon hearing the
roosters coming, would run for cover. But to Farmer John's amazement,
old Butch had his bell in his beak, so it couldn't ring.
He'd sneak up on a pullet, do his job and walk on to the next one.
John was so proud of old Butch, he entered him in the Renfrew County
Fair, and he became an overnight sensation among the judges.
The result... The judges not only awarded old Butch the No Bell Piece
Prize but they awarded him the Pulletsurprise as well.
Clearly old Butch was a politician in the making: who else but a
politician could figure out how to win two of the most highly coveted
awards on our planet by being the best at sneaking up on the populace
and screwing them when they weren't paying attention.
