When the data point tells a different story

I grew up on a farm, surrounded by all “Old MacDonald’s” animals.  What many farmers’ sons and daughters know is that chickens are good as they lay eggs, and rabbits are bad as they eat grass and are destructive to fences.

So as a child it came as a surprise that the accepted town version of where chocolate eggs came from made no sense.  The town version stated that the Easter Bunny came and left chocolate eggs, and we would all be tasked with finding these eggs in the garden.

But as a farmer’s son, I knew rabbits didn’t lay eggs, so how could it be possible that this animal that had always been a pest was all of a sudden the champion of chocolate eggs?

Fortunately, I had a father who was able to make it all clear to me. “Those town people have got it all wrong, the Easter chook (chicken) would come and lay the Easter eggs and the evil Easter bunny would come around and try to steal the Easter eggs, that’s why we don’t like bunnies”.

Even in my early days I was analytical, I went up to the chicken coop and sure enough the chickens were laying eggs…

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