Zebediah
was in the fertilized egg business. He had several hundred young layers,
called pullets, and eight or ten roosters, whose job was to fertilize the
eggs.
Zeb kept records, and any rooster that didn't perform well went
into the soup pot and was
replaced. That took an awful lot of Zeb's time;
so Zeb got a set of tiny bells and attached them to his roosters.
Each
bell had a different tone so that Zeb could tell, from a distance, which rooster
was performing. Now he could sit on the porch and fill out an efficiency report
simply by listening to the bells.
Zeb's favorite rooster was old
Brewster. A very fine specimen he was too; but on this particular morning Zeb
noticed that Brewster's bell wasn't ringing at all. Zeb went to investigate.
The other roosters were chasing pullets, bells a ringin'; The pullets
hearing the roosters coming would run for cover. BUT, to Zeb's amazement,
Brewster had his bell in his beak so it couldn't ring. He'd sneak up on a
pullet, do his job and head for another one.
Zeb was so proud of
Brewster he entered him in the County Fair.
Brewster was a sensation.
The judges not only awarded him The No Bell Piece Prize, but also The
Pulletsurprise.