Well, I guess I've got to post this little story yet again:

The longer you can stretch this out the better I guess.

An old hobo was walking down a country road sometime during the dust bowl days of the dirty thirties. His feet were bleeding. Sweat stained everything he was wearing. As he rounded a bend he saw a farmer out in front of his bone dry farm. There was a horse tied to what was left of a fence. He asked the farmer, "Would you please sell me that horse? I'm just about all in & can't go on any further without it." The farmer answers, "Never." The old 'bo yells, "Ya gotta sell me that horse. I'll die out here with nothing to ride!" The farmer responds, "You don't want that horse!" At the end of his rope the hobo cries out, "PLEASE SELL ME THAT HORSE!!!" "Well," says the farmer, "since you are now more polite than you were at first, I'll sell it to ya, but it's an 'egg setter'. I know you don't want that horse." "What the hell is an egg setter!"---the hobo stammered. "An egg setter is a horse that sits on eggs!!!"

The hobo just knew that he needed a horse---any horse. He paid for the horse, climbed up on his old swayback and went on down the road. The farmer stood in the road and watched him disappear.

As the man came to a field where several ground nests from killdeer were apparent over the fence on the right, the horse whinnied, bucked two or three times, tossed the old hobo on the ground, jumped the fence with 3 feet to spare and ran pell mell for the nest where it turned around and squatted on the nest and the three eggs within it.

Two hours later the old guy was still trying to pry the horse off the nest. Another 2 hours later he was going down the road with the yellow crap from the eggs still apparent and hardening all over the horses rear end. Things went well for the next day. It seems that there were no nests on the ground in this particular area. They were all up in the trees. The horse did look longingly up into the high branches every so often though...

The next day was a beautiful one. The Wob was as contented as he'd ever been as he guided his good and trusty mount onto the bridge over the Arkansas River (pronounced "Ar-Kansas" River since they were now heading up the old Chisholm Trail into Kansas from Oklahoma.) About half way over the bridge, the horse (who had been affectionately named Ovum by it's rider) looked off the side of the bridge into the shallow sand bars and limpid pools of the river. After sort of thinking about it for a minute, the gallant steed whinnied once, moaned twice, snorted 3 times, bucked hard four times before dislodging the man on his heaving back. That feat accomplished, the mighty animal, no longer looking swaybacked but actually looking quite noble, leaped off the bridge and into the water---where it promptly and quite ceremoniously sat down right in the water.

Three MONTHS later that same old gent got out of traction and his body cast was removed. He was able to leave the gentle nuns of the HALF BREED CATHOLIC HOSPITAL in Wichita, Kansas. He got up onto a completely different horse. He led Ovum by a long tether rope that would allow him to run (and sit) wherever he wanted to sit.

After 3 more months he found himself leading Ovum down that same Oklahoma road thad led to the farm where he'd bought the cayuse from the farmer so long ago. The farmer was holding a pig in his arms---and he was holding it high enough that the swine cold eat the apples right off of the apple tree that was still growing in the front yard in spite of the drought. The 'bo (whose name I won't tell ya--to ptotect the innocent) was pretty amazed. He thought that the frarmer was pretty stupid and that holding the pig up in the air so the pig could eat the apples was a total waste of time---and he told the farmer so. All the farmer said was, "WHAT'S TIME TO A PIG?"

Now, the old boy was pretty exhaused by his long treck. In later times they would argue around the cracker barrel whether or not his adventures rivaled old Charlie Goodnight hauling his dead partner, Oliver Loving, a couple thousand miles to bury him where he wanted to be burried. Old Texas Rangers said it surpassed Captain Woodrow Call hauling Augustus McRae all the way from Montana to Texas for the same reason. I'm not here to try to mediate which was the greatest accomplishment. All I know is that the old hobo was ticked off pretty good and his back hurt. He told the farmer, "Look, you said the damn horse sat on eggs and it did do that. Almost killed me in it's haste to get to that ground nest them kildeers have. There's still some o' the yellow crusted crud on his ass. But we was goin' over the Arkansas (pronounce Ar-Kansas ) River and it tossed me off. It sat down right in the middle of the river. Busted my back and 4 ribs and my pelvis too. I'm just gettin' out o' the hospital. I'm just out o' the traction rig and the body cast. I'm hurtin' like hades too--you can bet on that. I'm giving this horse back to you and you don't even gotta pay me for him. But let me ask ya this. What's this about him sitting in the middle of the river???"

The farmer took a minute think about it & then he took a deep breath. "Ya know partner, I forgot to tell ya. He sits on fish too !!"

(Art Thieme)
And this is the last time I'm gonna post this dumb thing anywhere. This is the definitive version though. I did put a bit o' thought into it and doin' it right. So copy it somewhere. Now it belongs to the ages!