Last month’s contest featured a drawing by cartoonist Katherine Bettis, who joined our judges’ panel to help select the winning entry and five runners-up. Her drawing is set at a dinner table, where a cow who’s wearing an apron is serving hay to her calf and a human boy. The boy, who’s staring at his portion of hay, looks upset. The cow is speaking.
Katherine’s original caption was, “Doesn’t like hay? Who doesn’t like hay?” That’s better than many captions that are removed from cartoons so just the drawings can be used for caption contests.
I’ll start this commentary by highlighting an unusually long entry: “And drop the ‘I don’t have a four-chambered stomach to facilitate the regurgitation of cellulose before rechewing it into cud’ routine.” Though I usually prefer short captions, long ones are fine provided they don’t contain unnecessary words, and this one doesn’t. Most important, it’s funny.
Here’s another good reference to the way cows digest hay: “At least try to regurgitate it before you say you don’t like it.”
Several of you noted that the boy has rudely placed his elbows on the table:
- “Elbows off the table. Honestly—were you raised in a barn?”
- “Get your elbows off the table. Were you born in a barn?”
- “Elbows off the table. Were you born in a house?”
- “First, get your forelegs off the table.”
That third caption is superior to the first two because people live in houses. How much you like the fourth caption depends on whether you’re bothered by the suggestion that a cow who speaks English wouldn’t understand the difference between forearms and forelegs. I wasn’t bothered and therefore put that entry in my top ten.
Speaking of which, my top ten included three terrific bestiality jokes my fellow judges didn’t appreciate:
- “Don’t like it? Fine, go live with your bestiality-loving father.”
- “Your brother looks nothing like the farmer.”
- “You’re as stubborn as your father.”
The first and third captions have the cow addressing the boy, while the second has the cow addressing her calf.
Here’s the month’s best pun: “Don’t be such a brahma queen.” I initially didn’t like the second-best (“Tommy, would you like to say graze.”), but it grew on me when I realized that saying graze could be a signal to start eating. I hated and still hate the month’s worst pun: “Why the bad moooood?” It somehow ended up on Trevor Hoey’s top-ten list, but only because he has a perverse desire to highlight terrible jokes.
The next two captions cleverly suggest that the boy is upset not because he has to eat hay, but because he didn’t get as much hay as the calf:
- “I gave you less because you only have one stomach.”
- “I didn’t purposely serve you less.”
There were many dark jokes alluding to the fact that cows become beef:
- “Your brother’s not complaining and he’s going to market tomorrow.”
- “If my son gets steak at your house, you can eat the hay.”
- “No, you most certainly may not have a hamburger.”
- “Do I complain that you’re not on the menu?”
- “Don’t you want to grow up big and tasty?”
That last caption is especially good because of the calf’s surprised expression, which makes him look like he’s just come to a terrible realization.
Here’s another great dark joke: “I told you not to get attached to the scarecrow.”
And here’s the best scatological joke: “Just eat around the bits of poop.”
Here’s a one-word caption: “Find!” Initially I didn’t get the “needle in a haystack” reference and I still think the joke is mediocre, but it is concise.
The next three entries all allude to the fact that cows have four stomachs—the rumen, reticulum, omasum, and abomasum—but they don’t make sense because the cow’s addressing the boy.
- “What’s the matter, dear? Do you have upset stomachs?”
- “Something wrong with your stomachs?”
- “Save a stomach for dessert.”
This joke almost works—“I don’t care if you don’t have the stomach for it.”—but the person who submitted it should have used the plural “stomachs.”
Here’s another joke that doesn’t quite work: “I spent all day chewing this for you.” The problem, I think, is that the hay on the table looks dry.
This next caption refers to the fact that dairy cows, which are bred to produce far more milk than their calves require, need humans to help them produce that much milk: “Could you give me a hand with the milk?”
Here’s the month’s best example of turning a common statement into a fitting caption: “It’s a family recipe.”
Whoever submitted this next entry took a similar approach but changed the last word of the statement: “In this house, we chew with our mouths open.”
The following caption highlights a seemingly insignificant detail—there are no plates on the table—while alluding to a common saying: “We don’t have plates. Your father got us banned from the china shop.”
I don’t love any of the final seven entries, but they’re clever enough to warrant inclusion in the commentary:
- “Don’t complain—you are being raised humanely.”
- “Angus, please get the ketchup for your friend.”
- “Would you rather be raised by wolves?”
- “You don’t have to eat it all. Just graze.”
- “Don’t make me put on the feed bag.”
- “There’s salt lick for dessert.”
- “Would you like a pitchfork?”
Congratulations to DIANE OLIVE, who won the contest with “I told you not to get attached to the scarecrow.” The five runners-up are:
- “And drop the ‘I don’t have a four-chambered stomach to facilitate the regurgitation of cellulose before rechewing it into cud’ routine.” STEVE EVERHART
- “We don’t have plates. Your father got us banned from the china shop.” VINCENT COCA
- “At least try to regurgitate it before you say you don’t like it.” JOHANNES KLASSEN
- “Elbows off the table. Were you born in a house?” KIMBERLY CLARKE
- “Don’t you want to grow up big and tasty?” MICHAEL BERNER
If you want to see how we made our selections, we recorded the process and posted it on our website.
Like what you see? Subscribe to our YouTube channel for more Caption Contest episodes.
And if you haven’t yet ordered my book on the caption contest even though it’s been out for almost two years, click on the following link: