A manureman’s story

Hello again! A few days ago I wrote here about the job of a manureman. Now I would like to share with you a funny story from my hometown, Ierapetra, which is narrated on a number of Cretan websites. So here’s the story:

In the old times, in Ierapetra lived an illiterate but very cunning man, whose name was Karchimas. He irritated people, drank like a water snake, banged his boots onto the ceiling, hit horses in the buttocks and used to say all the time: “I went to America, but it didn’t work out, so I came back”.

As a manureman, he worked day and night on the unpaved roads, collecting equine manure. But he had competitors; there were five manuremen hired by the city council to do the same work and one had to collect 2 kg of manure to buy a loaf of bread.

In time, motors began to make their appearance in Crete and gradually the number of equines decreased. As a result, the manuremen began to argue. One day, another manureman caught Karchimas collecting manure from a road that belonged to his own area and the following dialogue took place:

“-Hey! Leave the manure down! Go to the roads that the boss has shown to you!

-But there’s no manure there! Should I wait for some elf to poo?

-I’m saying I will collect it! It’s mine!

-Why? Did you drop it yourself?”

Karchimas was disappointed, thus he decided to make a prank on his annoying competitor. He collected pieces of manure and compressed them into one huge piece, which was big enough to say that a gigantic creature had dropped it. Then, he placed the manure on a road which was part of his competitor’s area and began to rumour that his colleague transformed into a disgusting, enormous monster at night. The housewives of the neighbourhood were naive enough to believe Karchimas’s words and called the police, saying that a big monster wandered in the area. When he saw the manure, the policeman saw it was a farce, but, since the women insisted, he called the priest. The priest came brought the appropriate “equipment” and conducted an exorcism.

A few days later, a local fisherman saw Karchimas laughing:

“-What’s the funny, Karchimas?

-That stupid colleague of mine was fired today and his area, hence his manure, was added to mine.

-Oh, yes? Thank God, fish don’t poo, otherwise, you would grab our seaways as well!”

I hope you found the story funny. Do you have any story to tell from the equine life of your area? Let me know in the comments!