The great sheep discovery

Few people know that coffee was discovered by sheep in Ethiopia in A.D. 850, mainly because the media hadn't been invented yet and so no one thought to interview the sheep, and all we have are the shepherds' word for how things happened, which is a little suspect because that word was "fjeklwecle." This naturally has led to several different interpretations of the events, such as that the year was actually 13,000 B.C., and the location was Arabia, or possibly the Bermuda Triangle.

These differences aside, the basic story of the greatest discovery known to man -- other than two-bathroom households -- remains the same. A bunch of shepherds were hanging out with their sheep, who were standing around engaging in various sheep activities, like standing around, until suddenly one day an angel appeared...

Whoops, wrong sheep story.

What really happened is that the sheep discovered a bush with some small berries on it. Sheep are not real smart, but they knew enough to keep their discovery from the shepherds, because they knew that would be the end of the supply of berries for them.

And for a while they did keep it a secret. The shepherds were too busy playing a primitive game they called "Wii" (the forerunner to our modern "Candy Land") to pay much attention, until one day the shepherds looked up from their game of Wii and made a very technical observation: After eating the berries, the sheep were behaving in a manner that has been variously described as "very lively," "of unusual vitality" and "an abnormally exuberant manner" -- such as skipping, rearing on their hind legs, breakdancing, leaping over tall trees in a single bound, etc.

The shepherds immediately ("after several months") became suspicious, as sheep are generally not known for being lively except at Super Bowl time, and so they investigated by trying the berries themselves. And thus was invented something that forever changed the face of civilization -- the word caper, which means "a leaping or cavorting dance motion."

But sure enough, just as the sheep had predicted, humans started carting off all their berries, leaving them to once again eat grass and stand around. A few enterprising sheep went off to New York to try to sell their story, but as New York hadn't been invented yet either, they eventually came back and stood around with the others. With all the social justice movements we have had in this world, do you ever hear of anyone concerned about sheeps' rights to First Discovery of Coffee Berries? Where are all the groups for "Caffeine for Sheep"? I'm just saying.

Coffee, however, did not become an instant hit. It was thought to be, variously, a food from the gods, or possibly from the devil. It was also some time before anyone thought to make it into a beverage (this is credited to a flock of Wompoo fruit doves in Australia, but we are unable to get into that story here), so mostly people just served the coffee beans with dip.

And the sheep -- well, word is that they got pretty good at playing Candy Land.