‘He had fair warning’: Cop who thinks his badge is a free pass to anything learns a hard lesson about ranch animals

There is fantastic humor to be found in the hubris of the Anthropocene; for all of humanity’s unprecedented capabilities and status as the de facto dominant species, we fail time and time again to realize just how little our man-made rules matter in the grand scheme of things.

A finger-pointer says you’re not allowed to feel sad? The sadness could not give less of a hoot about where it’s not allowed to go. The weatherman says it’s going to rain tomorrow? Not if the sky decides it’s going to keep itself clear. And if the law states you’re allowed to set foot anywhere you want? Well, maybe check and see what the aggressive bull in that nearby field has to say first.

Relayed by TikTok‘s @southern.dadbod, Doug spins a rather humorous tale of a recent encounter with a police officer, who apparently informed Doug that they had reason to believe he was growing illegal substances on his property. Doug, the genial and innocent citizen that he is, told the officer to go right ahead but avoid the field out back.

The cop, miffed by the implication that anyone thinks they can tell him what he can or cannot do, points to his badge and says “See this badge? This badge means I can go anywhere I want.” Satisfied with this display of righteousness, the cop stomps off to the field that Doug told him to avoid.

It was only after the steer began to give chase to this unfamiliar cop that Doug reminded him to show the bull his badge, which of course objectively admits one to exist in any space uninterrupted by man or nature. Maybe the bull just needed a memory refresher?

If this story sounds familiar to you, that’s because it probably is; this joke about the officer, the bull, and the badge has been in various comedic circulations for quite a while now. In all likelihood, Doug had no intention of deceiving us; he simply found great humor in the joke and wished to share it with those who hadn’t yet heard it.

It is, of course, probably impossible to pinpoint the exact origin of this specific joke, given the organic nature of humor and its ability to spread so rapidly, particularly with regard to the internet. In their 2006 joint research paper The First Joke: Exploring the Evolutionary Origins of Humor, however, authors Joseph Polimeni and Jeffrey P. Reiss propose the age of humor as a relatively widespread concept, to be 35,000 years.

That’s a lot of time for jokes, and we’ve got so many more to go. Keep laughing, folks; it’s good for you.