Montana Head Count
A rancher named Bud was checking on his livestock in a remote, high pasture in Montana when he spotted a 2015 BMW advancing up the bumpy track toward him in a cloud of dust.
The driver, a young man who was wearing a fancy, custom-tailored suit, Gucci® shoes, Louis Vuitton® sunglasses and Yves Saint Laurent® tie, leaned out the window and asked Bud, “If I tell you exactly how many cows and calves you have in your herd, will you give me a calf?”
Bud looks at the man, who is obviously a city boy, then back at his peacefully grazing animals and calmly answers, “Sure, why not?”
The young man parks his car, whips out his Apple iPad®, and surfs to a NASA page on the Internet, where he calls up a GPS satellite to get an exact fix on his location, which he then feeds to another NASA satellite that scans the area for an ultra-high-resolution photo.
The young man then opens the digital photo in Adobe Photoshop® and exports it to an image processing facility in Hamburg, Germany.
Within minutes, he receives an email on his iPad® that the image has been processed and the data stored. He then accesses an MS-SQL® database through an ODBC connected Excel® spreadsheet with email on his iPad® and, after a few minutes, receives a response.
Finally, he prints out a full-color report on his hi-tech, miniaturized printer, and studies it for a moment. He turns to Bud and says, “You have exactly 1,586 cows and calves.”
“Yep, that’s the right number, I reckon. I guess you can fit one in the back seat, just roll down the window s litle,” says Bud.
He watches with interest as the young man selects one of the animals and looks on with amusement as the young man bundles it into the back seat of his car.
Then Bud asks the young man, “Hey, if I can tell you exactly what your business is, will you give me back my critter?”
The young man thinks about it for a second and then says, “Sure, why not?’
“You’re a Congressman for the U.S. Government,” says Bud.
“Wow! You’re right,” says the young man, laughing nervously. “But how did you guess?”
“Heck – no guessing was required, son. In fact it’s pretty obvious,” answered Bud.
“You showed up here uninvited; you want to get paid for an answer I already knew, to a question I never asked. You used millions of dollars worth of equipment trying to show me how much smarter than me you are; and you don’t know squat about how working people make a living – or about cows, for that matter. For example – most folks call this ‘herd’ a flock of sheep.
“Now how ’bout you return my dog, and get off my property?”