"But buying in bulk is such a discount!"
Nathan eyed the 25 pound bag of rabbit food skeptically, despite my enthusiasm.
For you regular-type pet owners, let me explain the drama associated with a 25 pound bag of rabbit food. We are talking about something roughly 5 times the size of your pet. This isn't something Scout or Butch will down by the week's end. This is presented to the ever-frowing furmass in fouth-cup doses twice a day. To nibble his cotton tail through a 25 pound bag would take... would take...?
"Okay, let's make things interesting."
"How?"
"Let's try and figure out how long this bag of food will last. Like a bet. We'll see who can get closest to the day when the food will run out. Whoever is closest will win fifty bucks."
"Fifty bucks?" The scientist's eyes widened. True, we eat rice and beans for the nutritional value and not their pauper implications, but fifty dollars was approximately $49.75 higher than any previous bet we've taken between the two of us. And while it could buy me a blouse and a half at Francesca's, fifty bucks can get a nut-and-bolt tinkerer through a long winter.
"Okay I'm in."
He immediately set to work, grabbing pen and pad...but hesitated. "How much do you feed Milton every day?"
I smiled.
There it was--the key to all his success. Do I share such a valuable gem? Or do I watch the know-it-all squirm in his----
"Nevermind, it says how much you should feed rabbits on the bag. He's considered a 'large rabbit breed', right?"
Damn.
As Nathan walked to the kitchen with a measuring cup and a calculator, I grabbed a calendar and did my own mental math. In about 40 seconds I got my number and made a note on the calendar.
"Are you ready, yet?"
"Almost."
I made myself comfortable. After cross-stitching a few rows, Milton and I played a game of big-monster-little-monster while Nathan furrowed his brow a room away.
"You done, yet?" I called, from the floor, the rabbit licking my hand. I had just pretended to suffer a major cardiac arrest to test the rabbit's response time. After--no joke--putting his paws on my chest--Milton did what he could to offer my corpse some solace.
"Just about."
I scratched Milton's forehead for a bit. When I stopped he threw his head back into my hand, imploring more pets. Although his front paws kept slipping on the hardwood, he kept trying to maintain balance under my scratching hand. Some head-scratches and some earnest licks are about the best comfort he and I can offer each other. Picking him up in force of being a lap-rabbit only soothes me for a short time before facing the inevitable fact that he is not a cat. A ball of hair was beginning to puff from my scratching hand into the air. A rabbit cannot cuddle like a cat, but can for no lack shed like one.
"I've got it," said the scientist. "Let me show you how I did it." He grabbed my hand and pushed me into the kitchen. A tupperware of rabbit food was floating in a measuring cup of water.
"You see," he said, "1/4 cup of rabbit food displaced 50 mL of water. First I calculated how much water was displaced by the tupperware, and then subtracted that from the displacement of the food and the tupperware combined."
"Then, I converted mL to grams, which is easy, since it's a 1:1 ratio." He was very excited about all of this.
"So you feed Milton 100 grams of rabbit food each day," he said. "Then! I saw that the bag of rabbit food was 11.34 kg and cross-multiplied that by .1 kg per day, which is the same as dividing by that number and got 113.4 days! So my date is JUNE 2, 2015!!" He said, throwing his arms in the air. "I rounded down."
I started laughing.
"What's so funny?"
"My date is June 1," I laughed.
"What? No. How did you get that?"
Still laughing, I replied. "We normally buy 5 pound bags of rabbit food. I get one from the store about every 3 weeks. The 25 pound bag of food is 5 times as big, so I just multiplied 3 and 5. I added a few days for error, so just rounded to June 1."
"No," he said. He looked at the calendar. Then at me. "How did you know you buy rabbit food every three weeks?"
"We've had Milton for over two years. When's the last time you've bought rabbit food?" I smiled.
He frowned. "If I would have knowwwn how often--"
"But you didn't! And I think we all learned a valuable lesson today about doing too much science."
"What! No. My way was still right, and better--and--the $50--"
"I think we tied, if anything," I said, picking up Milton.
Nathan scratched the rabbit's forehead. "Well, I guess that was kind of fun," he said.
"God bless us--every one!" squealed the rabbit.
No comments:
Post a Comment