A rich-looking woman walks into a butcher’s shop. She looks at the poultry on display, and finally selects the scrawniest chicken. A little surprised, the butcher picks it up, gives her the total; and she’s on her merry way. The next week, the lady returns, and again, despite all her apparent wealth, she chooses the smallest chicken. The butcher, again, complies, and off she goes. The third week. Same scenario. She ignores the Poule de Bresse, the pheasants, the pintades, the fine cuts. Just the ugliest, smallest chicken. Finally, the butcher’s curiosity gets the better of him, so he asks: “Madam, if I may ask… you’ve been coming into my shop for weeks, buying nothing but the scrawniest chickens. I may be bold to assume, but you seem rather well-off. Surely, if price was an issue, you could get much better value at the local supermarket? So why do you come into this shop only to buy these sub-par chickens?” The lady laughs and says: “Oh, don’t worry, I understand completely how strange this may look. But you see, while I personally like a nice, succulent chicken breast, my husband loves the small pieces; wings, legs, and especially the necks. So I choose the chickens with the longest necks, so he can have his favorite, while I enjoy the rest of the chicken.” “I see…” Says the butcher. “That’s adorable. But wouldn’t you prefer a better kind of chicken, providing it still had that long neck?” “Why, yes, I would love that!” She replies. “But how? I’ve been coming here for weeks, and it’s always the smallest chickens that have those long necks.” “Leave it to me.” Replies the butcher. “Come back in two weeks time, and I’ll make sure you get my best Poule de Bresse, with that long neck for your husband, and a 200x better quality meat for yourself.” As promised, 2 weeks later, the butcher presents her with the most beautiful chicken you’ve ever seen. It also has a loooong neck. The lady is, off course, delighted, and happily pays the premium price. The next day, she comes back to the shop; raving about how excellent the chicken was. Her husband loved the neck, both for its length, but also because it was so much more flavorful than the usual chicken necks he had. The lady, herself, too, had nothing but 5 star comments on the quality of the poultry. So she asks the butcher if he can get her a chicken like that every week. The butcher happily agrees; after all; he’s making a great margin on those chickens. So this goes on for months on end. Each week; the butcher delivers an excellent, long necked chicken to the lady. Gradually, they get to know each other better over the usual small talk. So one day, many months later, the lady asks the butcher: “After all these months, I’ve been wondering just how you could provide me so suddenly with these long necked chickens?” “Well…” says the butcher; “it’s actually quite simple. When those chickens are raised, they’re fed their grain on a special tray; so we can track the quality of the food they eat. So I simply added half an inch each day to the height of the feeding tray, so the chicken had to stretch its neck more to get to the food. Over time, this stretched their necks so they grew to be much larger.” “Oh my!” Exclaimed the lady. “That’s quite ingenious! … Do you think this would also work in other situations?” “What do you mean, Madam?” asks the butcher. “Well… as you know, I dearly love my husband…” “That’s for sure, otherwise you wouldn’t be going through all this trouble for him.” Replies the butcher. “The thing is… as much as I love him… he’s somewhat lacking in size… You know… down… there…” admits the lady, although she’s clearly embarrassed to be talking about such a delicate matter. “Do you think this technique could work on him, too?” “I don’t see why not!” Says the butcher. “At least, it’s worth a try. Why don you lie down on a table and invite him to - you know… - then, gradually add some coins underneath the tables’ legs, and see how it goes!” Some weeks go by, the lady keeps coming for her chicken; but she doesn’t seem particularly happy, so the butcher is afraid to bring up the subject of their last conversation. Still, after nearly two months, be decides to ask her about the experiment. “I’m sorry to inquire,but did anything come from the experiment we discussed? Was it successful?” He asks. “It was… yet it wasn’t.” Replies the lady. “How so?” “My husband now has 3 inch toes.”