He was able to slice through the baby rabbits without any problem but found that the blade was not strong enough to force its way through the adult animals.
After struggling for half an hour, he relayed his concerns to his boss who smiled knowingly and replied:
“Remember what they say, son: old rabbits are hard to break.”
Joke Poo: The Plumber’s Lament
On his first day as an apprentice plumber, young Timmy was tasked with clearing a blockage in a particularly old building’s sewage system.
He managed to snake through the newer PVC pipes with ease, but found the antique, clay pipes wouldn’t budge. The snake kept getting stuck, and he couldn’t dislodge whatever was clogging them.
After wrestling with the pipes for over an hour, covered head to toe, he confessed his struggles to the master plumber, who chuckled, adjusted his tool belt, and said:
“Well Timmy, as they say… old pipes are hard to poo through.”
Okay, let’s analyze the joke:
Key Elements:
- Apprentice Butcher: An inexperienced worker, ripe for mishaps and misunderstandings.
- Rabbit Carcasses: A specific and slightly morbid item, setting a visual and darkly humorous tone.
- Baby Rabbits (Easy) vs. Adult Rabbits (Difficult): The core of the problem, highlighting the difference in physical characteristics based on age.
- “Old rabbits are hard to break”: A pun, playing on the literal difficulty of breaking bones and the figurative meaning of breaking habits or resilience in old age. The boss’s “knowing smile” implies the pun is intentional.
Type of Humor: Pun, situational irony, and a touch of dark humor.
New Humor Attempt (Witty Observation):
Did you know that rabbit bones, while surprisingly brittle when raw, become significantly stronger when cooked? This is due to the denaturing of collagen in the bone matrix. Which is also why your grandmother, who clearly hasn’t been properly poached, is still giving you grief about not calling often enough. Maybe the butcher’s apprentice was actually under-cooking the rabbits first, as some bizarre method for preserving their inherent ‘hardness’?