From the bad day at work archives...

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> I found this as a supposedly true story. Enjoy and remember to look up!

"I read it on the Internet, so it must be true."

> Earlier this year, the dazed crew of a Japanese Trawler were plucked out 
> of the Sea of Japan clinging to the wreckage of their sunken ship. Their 
> rescue, however, was followed by immediate imprisonment once authorities 
> questioned the sailors on their ship's loss.

1. This story first appeared in the mid-70's, except at the time it
   was a fishing boat on a Siberian lake.

2. Fishing trawlers are huge.  These are large sea-going floating
   factories with processing facilities.  A cow falling out of the sky
   might kill some people and damage the superstructure and equipment,
   but it would not penetrate or shatter the hull.  These things are
   designed to withstand the force of waves generated by typhoons.

3. While it's been a while since I lived in Japanese, I never heard of
   anybody being imprisoned for telling a whopper of a story.  Insurance
   fraud is another matter, but who would scuttle his ship then make up 
   a story as unlikely as a mooing meteorite to cover up his fraud?

4. Why in the world would a Russian air crew admit to stealing a cow
   then dumping it overboard?

5. For that matter, how would the cargo plane crew gotten the cow past
   the loadmaster?  Nothing goes on a cargo plane without the
   loadmaster's knowledge, and a loadmaster simply will not let a cow
   wander around loose on his plane!

6. Who is going to be silly enough to open the cargo hatch and push a
   cow out at 30,000 feet?  Military cargo planes, even Russian ones,
   are pressurised.  You'd have an awful mess even if all the crewmen
   weren't blown out.

> Unprepared for live cargo, the Russian crew was 
> ill-equipped to manage a now rampaging cow within its hold. To save the 
> aircraft and themselves, they shoved the animal out of the cargo hold as 
> they crossed the Sea of Japan at an altitude of 30,000 feet. 

Here is the Real Story: aliens had abducted a cow in order to do
research on it (you've heard of cows being discovered in the middle of
Kansas which had been mysteriously disemboweled, right?).  For whatever
reason, the aliens decided to dump the cow over the Pacific ocean.  The
poor Japanese fishermen, when they reported this to the authorities,
were immediately arrested since the government is in on the alien
conspiracy.  When the secret got out about the falling cow and arrested
fishermen, the government concocted this story about Russians stealing
cows.

Fits the facts, doesn't it?

Richard "feeling creative" Masoner