Once there was an Innkeeper who had been elected as Mayor of his small village. One day a villager reported to him that one of his sheep had been killed by a wolf. “We don’t have wolves,” said the Mayor. “They are in the village next door but I shut that all down,” and he went back to tweeting.
The next day a different farmer reported that two of his sheep had been killed. “Well, maybe we have one wolf, but it will leave in a few days when it gets hot.” He put his son-in-law in charge of wolf patrols.
On the third day, farmers reported that they had found more dead sheep and asked the mayor to build a fence to protect the sheep. “We can’t let the cure be worse than the disease,”replied the Mayor. He sent out the village crier: “Great wolf hoax! Overall sheep deaths unchanged from last year’s brucellosis outbreak!”
By the next week, farmers notices that half of their flock was missing, and besieged the Mayor at his town meeting. “This is only because we do such a good job counting sheep,” said the Mayor. “Nobody does as good a job as us. If we stopped counting our sheep so often, we wouldn’t have this problem.”
Gradually, all the farmers moved to the village next door, leaving only the Mayor and a few remaining supporters. One day, while walking the road, the Mayor encountered a hungry pack of wolves. “Help, wolves, wolves!” shouted the mayor. His cries drifted down to the Tavern owner, who was lunching with the Mayor’s children. “Isn’t that ridiculous," said the Tavern owner. “Everyone knows we don’t have wolves in our village,” and they all chuckled.
The wolves happily devoured the Mayor, whose body was plump and juicy. “It’s a good thing for us that his only exercise was riding a golf cart,” remarked the pack leader, and the wolves howled with laughter.
Moral: You may be able to fool some of the people all of the time, or all of the people some of the time, but eventually even simple village folk can recognize an idiot.
