I often watch Canadian geese as they round up the troops to make the big trek for the travel season, and it often occurs to me; why is one side of the V formation always shorter than the other side? Is there some sort of aerodynamic benefit to be found in this? Is it a sign to other geese establishing flight patterns? But maybe, just maybe geese are smarter than we give them credit for and they are doing it just to mess with us. It wouldn’t surprise me one bit if they were up there just laughing at us the whole time, “Hey look at the humans, they look totally confused.” Anybody who knows anything about Canadian geese know that these are mean spirited foul birds with bad tempers. They will attack you just for looking at them cross. I totally wouldn’t put it past them to pull some dark prank like this just to frustrate the delicate infrastructure of the human psyche.

Then one day it occurred to me. Finally, the answer came to me like a bolt out of the blue, like a vision burnt across the clouds. One side is shorter than the other, because there are less geese on that side. Whew, glad to have that monkey off my back (or goose as it were), now I can get back on to more intellectual pursuits.

So, how many licks does it take to get to the tootsie center of a tootsie pop anyway?