Defunct Asylums

A certain South American nation had undergone another revolution and found that the ousted dictator had shipped the national treasury to his offshore banks. Therefore, the new government found itself bankrupt. Among other services that it could not afford to continue to provide was the operation of several large laughing academies.

The chief psychiatrists for the various institutes of mental health met in conference with the new president and, after much anguished consideration, it was decided in the interests of public safety that the incurable inmates could not simply be turned out onto the streets. Instead, it was decided that they would be put onto a large isolated jungle island in the river to fend for themselves.

This volcanic island had been a long-term wildlife preserve for the nation's endangered species. On the island lived various rare species of monkeys and parrots and one example of a particularly rare species of sloth.

When the day arrived for the new colony of former mental health patients to be established, they were ferried in small groups to the island. As they came ashore, the new arrivals began exploring the island. They soon discovered the magnificent rare sloth in a huge tree, suspended from his favorite limb above the steaming water of a volcanic pool.

As more and more of the new colonists arrived, they flocked to the tree to stare and gibber in fascination at the sloth. The sloth, therefore, became as agitated as a sloth could get and crept further out along his tree limb. As the crowd grew, the sloth crept out further and further until the limb finally snapped and he fell to his death into the bubbling water of the steaming pool below.

This is, of course, but another proof that too many kooks boil the sloth.