Yet another reason why I love it here

We had this block's large animal rotation today.  It was nothing out of the ordinary, we just practiced doing physical exams on a cow.  When we were scrubbing our boots and getting ready to leave, I cornered one of the large animal faculty members, and blindsided him with one of the most poorly thought-out things that has come out of my mouth in awhile.

Me: "Random question for you."
Dr. T: "OK?"
Me: "You were talking about pain control for debudding calves earlier, and I was thinking...  You know that crazy guy that made unicorn goats in the 70's? Could I make unicorn cows with the same method?"
Dr. T (who is a badass, and didn't tell me that I just said the most retarded thing he's ever heard): "I don't see why not. As long as you relocated the horn buds before they started to vascularize, it should work."
Me: "So the horn buds on cattle aren't that different from goats?"
Dr. T: "Nope.  That should work just fine."
Me: "Awesome.  When I finally snap and go through a mad scientist phase, I'll let you know how my unicorn cows turn out."

Seriously, how did I manage to approach one of the most sarcastic people on campus, who will pick on students for the silliest little things, and somehow have a serious conversation with him about making unicorn cows without him rolling his eyes at me, or cracking a joke or anything?  I love this school.

And if you're completely lost about this whole thing, basically, this guy, Otter Zell, made some unicorn goats in the 70's and 80's.  Basically, instead of de-budding the neonatal goats like is done customarily, they removed the horn buds, and relocated the two of them into one central bud on the forehead.  The resulting single bud grew into a long, straight unicorn horn.

Ok, so eccentric hippie type creates living unicorns, then fades into obscurity, right?  Nope.  He popped up again in the news recently for opening up a real-life wizarding school. I'm sure he just used a pop-culture icon to promote his own brand of paganism he's been following his whole life, but the concept of marketing a religion to harry potter fans cracks me up.

And for kicks, here's an interesting cracked article that might interest some of you animal lovers.  6 Surprisingly Advanced Ways Animals Use Medicine. It mentions that woolly spider monkeys have figured out how to eat native plants as a form of natural birth control.  That's right.  Spider monkeys are smarter than a big chunk of the people I went to high school with.