Hippo Versus Leprechaun

(A Fable): Some time back near a little town in Ireland where the only educated soul was the parish priest, a travelling circus lost their star attraction when a hippopotamus bolted after the circus train derailed from the tracks. The hippo was a relatively reserved creature for a species known generally to be one of the deadliest on the African continent, darting about the countryside trying to make itself as scarce as possible which is no mean feat for a fully grown adult animal that weighs around a half ton. Well, the local folk of this little town would wake to find their plowed fields ravaged and their gardens eaten up. They were not on the telegraph line and had not heard of the circus being nearby or even of a train leaving the tracks. Being superstitious and uneducated people, the villagers naturally assumed some deviltry was at work. One day a little girl on a farm near town insisted she had seen a leprechaun bouncing about when she went to use the outhouse on a night the barley crop had been trampled and decimated. Suddenly more folk insisted they had also witnessed the fabled protector of the "pot of gold" doing mischief. No one but the town vagrant, a roustabout, drunkard, and ne'er-do-well, claimed the damage was caused by anything but the rampaging leprechaun. The incredible tale the least believable character in town insisted on was that in the dead of night he had almost been crushed by a boar of enormous size, or a farmer's huge hog run amok or perhaps, most implausibly of all, an African rhino or hippopotamus somehow transported across the waters to the tranquil shores of Erin. Soon all nine hundred and ninety-nine denizens of the shire save two insisted they had seen the leprechaun despoiling the crops. The town drunk with his ridiculous assertion and the priest who had reserved judgement. Then one night, the priest's mind was made up for him when he heard a rustle in the bushes and his terror overcame his curiosity and he ran from the scene as fast as he could move his cassock. The priest too then insisted an evil leprechaun was at work. You see the lesson here plainly enough: Nearly a thousand people calling a hippo a leprechaun does not make it so. I would rather stick with one held in disrepute while telling the truth than follow the lies of the multitude. So I will continue to embrace "nine, nine, nine" and support Herman Cain no matter how many unsubstantiated claims are made.