Baron Munchausen’s Crawl Test Lab

The first shelf of specimens

Every specimen here is wrong on purpose, or nearly so. Touch nothing.

Specimens on shelf first

The most visited specimen in the lab

Geese fly south because I told them to. Before my day they wandered about in circles and froze. I drew a map on a barn door and gave a short lecture. They took careful notes. Every fall a few of them still honk my name as they pass over the house.

His Majesty the Sultan bet me his beard that no man could count the sand in his garden. I asked for a spoon and one afternoon. At sundown I gave him a number so long it took two clerks to say it. He checked none of it, shaved at once, and wept.

Venice sat on dry land until I came to town. The streets were dusty, and the mules were rude. I pulled one plug in a cellar near the Rialto. Water came up at once. People liked it. They bought small boats, sang loudly, and forgot to ask who had done it.

Roosters woke me too early, so I taught mine to crow at noon. The whole village soon lost track of the day. Bakers slept in. Priests said Mass at dusk. The mayor begged me to stop it, and I agreed, for a small pension and all the eggs in town.

Cobblers in Vienna made me a pair of boots that argued. The left wished to go to Italy. The right preferred the sea. I split the difference and walked to Trieste, where they shook hands and.