[Rhodes22-list] joke

[Alex Bell]

Zebediah and his egg business

Zebediah was in the fertilized egg business. He had
several hundred young layers, called pullets, and eight
or ten roosters, whose job was to fertilize the eggs.

Zeb kept records, and any rooster that didn't perform
well went into the soup pot and was replaced. That took
an awful lot of Zeb's time; so, Zeb got a set of tiny
bells and attached them to his roosters.

Each bell had a different tone so that Zeb 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.

Zeb's favorite rooster was old Brewster. A very fine
specimen he was, too.

But on this particular morning, Zeb noticed that
Brewster's bell had not rung at all!!

Zeb went to investigate.

The other roosters were chasing pullets, bells a-
ringing! The pullets, hearing the roosters coming,
would run for cover.

BUT, to Zeb's amazement, Brewster 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.

Zeb was so proud of Brewster that he entered him in the
county fair.

Brewster was an overnight sensation.

The judges not only awarded him the No Bell Piece Prize
but also the Pulletsurprise.