An
old mountain man in Arkansas was sick
and bedridden. He had not been
outdoors for a few weeks and had a
sharp craving for a meal of wild
squirrel. He summoned his
half-idiot son into the room and instructed him to
go squirrel hunting and
bring him back a squirrel or two. He also told
his son to be very
careful not to shoot the squirrel in the head as he
would need its
brains later to “tan” the squirrel’s pelt. (Tanning a
skin using the
animal’s brains is a common practice in certain areas,
it
generally takes about one brain to tan one skin).

The idiot son spent
most of the day searching the woods for tree
squirrels, but was not
having any luck. Finally, high up in a sweet-gum tree,
he spotted a
squirrel’s head sticking out from a hole. He remembered
his Pa’s
admonitions to save the brains. After deciding he may not have

another chance, he shot it in the head, thus ruining the brains.

r
His sick Pa was upset, “I can’t tan that skin without no brains!”
he
said, “Now what am I a gonna do?” Thinking quickly, he
remembered
that up on the river there were 3 fisheries biologists doing some
field
work.

“Well, we’re only tanning one squirrel skin,
walk up the river and
shoot one of them dang fish biologists and
I’ll use his brains to tan
the skin,” he told the son. The son did as
he was told and soon returned
with the prize. As it turned out, the
brain wasn’t large enough and
the boy was upset as he would have
to make another trip to harvest the
other two biologist’s
brains.

“Look on the bright side, boy”, the old man told him, “Two more

ought to be just enough. We’d have been in real trouble if they was

BOTANISTS!”