I had to read that through a couple of times before it clicked.
Bravo!!
This will go into my arsenal of “jokes that get me asked to leave the party.”
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Just stole this one and pulled it on Spawn2. Perfect!
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Could be worse reasons than that 
How long before Spawn2 “got it”? Took me reading it aloud to myself to say “OH YEAH! Good one!”
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The good news is that it works just as well with “mom” instead of dad.
I’d tell it to our cat, but I wouldn’t expect much of a reaction 
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Immediate. They’re pretty sharp. In fact, I’m surprised that the “hike” wasn’t met with suspicion.
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So this American fella, name of William (“Call me ‘Bill!’) Beaumont, decides that he wants to take a walking tour of Australia. Not the big cities, though. He wants to see all the little tiny outback towns stuck in the middle of nowhere. Like Alice Spings and such.
So Bill goes out and gets himself all the equipment. Cushioned socks, expensive walking shoes, one of those big sticks, backpack frame with bedroll. He even got one of those bush-hats and hung a bunch of corks from the brim. The whole kit and kaboodle. And off he goes.
And things go surpringly well! He sees a bunch of little towns, some bigger, some smaller, talking with the locals, seeing kangaroos hop along, avoiding anything that remotely looks like a snake or a spider. Finally about 2 weeks in, as he’s cresting a small hill he sees a hand painted sign: Mercy - 1 km. And sure enough as he peers down from the hill, there’s a tiny group of building clustered on either side of the road. He walks down into town and sees a post office that looks closed, a general store, also closed, and a small diner with its window sign proclaiming it open. There’s no cars, no people, nothing else.
Bill goes into the diner. The screen door bangs behind him. He sits at the counter, waiting. Nothing. “Hello? Is anyone here?”
A voice with a thick Aussie accents shouts back “Have a seat, mate. Be right with ya!” And a moment later a squirrel runs out from the kitchen, grabs a menu from behind the counter in its teeth and drags it across the counter to Bill, where it drops the menu and chitters at him.
(I am told by numerous Australians that there are no squirrels in Australia, to which I respond “Who’s telling this story, you or me?”)
Anyway, Bill states at the squirrel for a minute. Nothing happens. “Hello? Anyone back there? There’s uh… a squirrel here. What do I do?” The voice from the kitchen shouts out “Don’t got many people here in Mercy. We taught the animals to help out. Just tell him your order.”
Flustered, Bill stammers “Ummm tea. Yes. I’d like some tea.” The squirrel chitters again and scampers back to the kitchen, and soon comes dragging a tiny wagon with a cup and saucer, a teapot, teabag and a lemon slice. He drops it off in front of Bill and runs off again.
Well, Bill is astonished. Trying to make sense of it all, he opens the lid of the teapot to put the teabag in when he notices there seems to be a lot of hair floating in the water. “Hello? Excuse me? Whoever’s back there? My hot water seems to have a bunch of hair in it.”
The voice from the kitchen calls back “Ah, no worries. That’s just from our chef, the koala. He’s shedding.”
Bill replies “I’m sorry to hear that, I guess, but so you think you could maybe filter it out?”
Suddenly the kitchen door bursts open a a large woman with a wooden spoon in her hand stomps angrily out of the kitchen. “You bloody yanks! Don’t you know? The koala tea of Mercy is not strained!”
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That’s a long way to go for a loud groan.
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All the best ones are.
Except for the guy that entered ten of his best puns in a newspaper contest. He thought at least one would get an award, but, alas…
…no pun in ten did.
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And the hits keep coming 
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I’m a sucker for a good shaggy dog story!
(I do realize that “good” and “shaggy dog story” are often considered incongruous if not mutually exclusive. I can’t help it if the listener has no appreciation for the art!)
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Thank you for being another fan of that particular sub-genre.
I have a store of them, but I won’t inflict more than one a week into the group here.
I once expanded the ‘Australia’ joke so it took the better part of 15 minutes to tell. It was a party, everyone was a little buzzed in one fashion or another. When the punchline hit, a woman looked up at me and said “Goddamnit! I forgot this was a joke!”
One of my finer moments 
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A classmate once held an entire school bus in his thrall for over an hour with the story of “13 Ping Pong Balls” on the way back from a field trip. I think I’ve also heard it as the “Pink Ping Pong Balls”. He dropped the punchline just as the bus was pulling into the school lot. I almost witnessed a murder by mob that night. I was fascinated at how he was able to tell the story to keep everyone engaged. It takes some talent to prevent them from checking out partway through.
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Had to google that one 
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“I haven’t slept for ten days, because that would be too long.“
- Mitch Hedberg
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The mods aren’t informed if we don’t inform them (or unless they happen to be here on their own).
So stuff like this slips through, which is cool as far as I am concerned. Whether it is slightly toward one side or toward the other side.
But I (like most here) don’t like stuff going too much into the political.
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The mods generally keep a pretty tight ship here, but yes — a small volunteer team won’t be able to catch each infraction, which is why the flags exist.
TBH I’m amazed we’re still talking about this. Meanwhile everyone else has moved on. Or should have by now 
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