Rossputin.com Rational Thinking About Our World

Thanks to G.T. at the Independence Institute's Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms Party for this pearl...

A woman walks into a veterinarian's office holding a duck and says to the vet "Something's wrong with Donald! Can you please examine him?"

The vet says sure, and they go into the exam room where the vet looks carefully at the duck, feels for a heartbeat, listens for breath, and looks at its eyes, and says to the woman "I'm sorry, ma'am, but your duck is dead."

The woman says "No! Please, can you try some other test...maybe it's something else!"

The vet obliges, puts the duck down on the floor, and opens a nearby cage letting a black Labrador Retriever out. The dog walks around the duck several times, sniffing it and prodding it with its nose, but there is no response at all from the duck. The vet says "I'm sorry, ma'am, but your duck really is dead."

"No!", cries the woman again, "Can't you please try some other test? Anything!"

The vet is a bit exasperated but the woman obviously needs more certainty, so he goes into the next room and brings in a Siamese Cat which cautiously approaches the duck, sniffs it, then reaches out with its paw and pushes on the ducks head. The duck remains motionless.

The vet says to the woman, "I'm truly sorry, but I promise your duck is really dead and there really isn't anything more I can do."

The woman seems to accept the situation, thanks the vet for his time, and asks how much she owes.

The vet replies "That will be Sixteen Hundred and Twenty-Five dollars."

"What?" exclaims the woman? "How could that be???"

"Well," says the vet, "normally it would only be $25 to pronounce an animal deceased, but you ran up an extra $100 for lab work, and $1500 for a cat scan!"