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ON THE EDGE OF COMMON SENSE

Rhino Love

Posted

Dr. Fosse, once of Pretori, told me about Martha and Arthur, two star-crossed rare white rhinos. In a governmental gesture of goodwill, South Africa agreed to ship Arthur to Tanzania to mate with Martha.

Brilliant veterinarians, competent game management officials, long winded reproductive specialists and the press discussed at length the procedures involved and the benefits that would accrue with these international relations.

            They soon discovered that rhinos cycle according to the length of daylight hours. Martha, on Equatorial Daylight Time, was never quite synchronized with Arthur, on Tropic of Capricornical Time. When he was randy, she had a headache and when she was cuddly, he was not in the mood.

            However, our team of deep thinkers figgered a way around it. They'd artificially inseminate Martha! I can just see these characters squatting under an Acacia tree, breakin' out a case of Congo Lite and drawing their plans in the dirt with pipettes.

            But since Martha wasn't cooperating anyway, and no sweet-smelling rhino geldings were around, they decided to collect Arthur's semen with an electro ejaculator.

            Enlisting the aid of their agricultural engineers, they built a homemade ejaculator out of wire, copper electrodes, a hand crank and lots of electrical tape.

            Arthur was quite tame, so on the big day they led him out with a loop around the horn and tied him to a thorn tree. With proper lubrication, the head mogul inserted the prod and set the cowboys to crankin'. Alas, Arthur showed no response.

            "He's probably packed with dry feces which is interfering with conduction of the current," interjected the rhino physiologist.

            So, they attempted to clean him out while he stood there compliantly. Then they tried again. No luck.

            "Being a desert beast, possibly there is a lack of internal moisture," observed the rhino hydrologist. "How 'bout an enema?"

            They hung a 20-gallon container from the tree, inserted a hose and the water disappeared like a Diet Sprite in the Sahara. "More water!" they cried. Another 20 gallons were fetched and inserted. Arthur stood unruffled.

             Agreeing that should have certainly lubricated Arthur, the chief acting assistant veterinary cowboy technician strode forth and inserted his plastic sleeved arm to evacuate the bowel. Arthur had had enough.

            He clamped his powerful aft torpedo door shut just above the hapless white smocked invader's elbow. They thundered off through the brush! The crew followed in the Land Rover, eating their sack lunches and videoing the chase.

            A hundred yards down the track the offending appendage popped out followed by 40 gallons of pent up colored water. The invader lay like a drowned muskrat left in the furrow. Arthur raced off to the other side of the game park.

            "Yer right," I told Dr. Fosse, "we couldn't have done it better."

Baxter Black is a cowboy poet, former large-animal veterinarian and entertainer of the agricultural masses. Learn more at www.baxterblack.com.

Baxter Black

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