An explorer on safari through Africa discovers a magnificently plumed bird known as a Raree. The bird is near death from exhaustion and starvation brought about by a combination of poachers and climatic changes which have turned its once-friendly environment into a death-trap. The bird is uncharacteristically docile, and does not flee from the explorer when he approaches it.
The explorer had believed the Raree birds were an extinct species; and so to save the creature from an environment which has become hostile, and to preserve the species, he brings it back with him to the United States.
Proper feeding and warmth bring the bird around to its normal behavior. Far from being docile, the Raree bird reverts to being a pain in the ass. It tears open the refrigerator with its beak and rummages around for food. It overturns garbage cans and rummages around for food. Its instinctive loudness and viciousness reassert themselves, and the explorer finds himself gradually losing his mind.
He decides to do away with the Raree, figuring that if nature had wanted the species to survive,
it would have given the birds better survival skills.
He loads the Raree into a pickup truck and drives to a high cliff. He has put drugs into the bird's morning feed so it is docile. He binds its wings and hauls it over to the edge of a 300-foot-high cliff overlooking the ocean. The bird opens its eyes, looks down, and says to the explorer:
"It's a long way to tip a Raree."
This tale is one of the first this genre that I can recall hearing. I was nine or ten years old (1951 or 52) and had, to my knowledge, never heard It's a Long Way to Tipperary nor did I know that there was a town named Tipperary (background photo) in Ireland. The person telling the tale was older and much more sophisticated than I was and thought the joke was hilarious. I thought he was looney-tunes.
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