This is a very old story and many versions exist. Two are presented here, a rude version and a more socially acceptable version.

This first version was sent to us by Pesner.

There was a fly buzzing around a barn one day when he happened on a pile of fresh horse manure. Due to the fact that it had been hours since his last meal, he flew down and began to eat. He ate and ate and ate. Finally, he decided he had eaten enough and tried to fly away. He had eaten too much, though, and could not get off the ground.

As he looked around wondering what to do now, he spotted a pitchfork leaning up against the wall. He climbed to the top of the handle and jumped off, thinking that once he got airborne, he would be able to take flight. Unfortunately he was wrong and dropped like a rock, splatting when he hit the ground.

The moral to the story is:

Never fly off the handle when you’re full of shit.

Chris Cole heard this one while he was in high school.

There once was a farm dog who in no uncertain terms “owned” his domain. He was a tough ol’ cagey canine and had instilled a healthy fear of him into all the barnyard animals. All, that is, except for a sarcastic crow who had a superiority attitude surely equal to the his own. Well, one day the farmer’s wife was making a fresh batch of bologna on the kitchen counter. Before she could put it into the refrigerator, her husband urgently called for her assistance in the barn. While she was gone, the cocky crow flew into the open kitchen window and began helping himself to the fresh meat on the counter top. The dog came into the kitchen, saw what was happening, and began barking at the crow. The crow just ignored him and continued to eat until he was almost three times his normal size. At this point the crow hopped up onto the handle of the water pump next to the sink and began to loudly caw back at the dog, teasing and taunting him until he was in a frenzy.

Feeling mighty smug at his superiority, the bologna-stuffed crow lept off the pump, intending to swoop down at the dog and then make his getaway back out the kitchen window. However, the crow failed to take into account the great increase in his own weight. He dove down at the dog, crowing loudly, and then tried to pull up. To his dismay and panic, he couldn’t! Instead he fell with a loud plop onto the floor, at which point the enraged dog pounced on the crow, only leaving behind a few stray feathers when he was finished. The moral of the story is: Don’t fly off the handle when you’re full of baloney!