Once upon a time, a pasture full of cattle was hit by a tornado. Most of
the cattle were knocked over. After this happened several times, one of
them started to notice a pattern.
"Yo, Bessie!"
"Yeah, Bossie?"
"When we get a tornado, do you always get knocked
down?"
"Yeah. You too?"
"Yeah. And ol' Ferdinand over there, he gets knocked down too,
right?"
"Yeah! And my daughter Bootsie gets knocked down, but my little son
Frankie doesn't. He stumbles a bit, but always stays up. I wonder why that
is..."
"That's what I've been thinking about."
So they ate some hay, thought about it a bit, ate some more hay, got
milked, ate some more hay, took a nap, ate some more hay, kept ol'
Ferdinand happy, ate some more hay, made the bettors on squares E6 and H7
happy (albeit in quite a different way from Ferdinand), ate some more hay,
and went to sleep for the night.
During the night, Bossie had a dream, of two sailing ships. One was a
large schooner, the other a tiny little fishing boat. A storm came up
suddenly. Waves broke over the sides of both ships. The crews hurriedly
pulled down the sails. The fishing boat just hauled down its two little
sails, and waited out the storm. But the schooner was in trouble. Its men
kept slipping in the rigging, the wet sails would stick together, and
finally, the wind caught the sails and just pushed the larger ship
right over.
The next morning, Bessie and Bossie were talking about their dreams.
Bessie pointed out that Bossie's was the solution to the mystery of why
only small male cattle can remain standing during a tornado. "You
see," said Bessie, "it's mainly a matter of catching the wind.
You and I and Ferdinand are big, so the wind pushes us a lot, and over we
go. But little Frankie doesn't have much area for the wind to push on, so
he's a lot steadier."
"Hmmmm. Well, that makes sense," replied Bossie, "but that
still doesn't explain why Bootsie doesn't get knocked over!"
"Well, you're right there," admitted Bessie, "but all I
know is, wee bulls wobble, but they don't fall
down!"
