The Ballad of Barty and the Bouncing Dino-Egg

Bartholomew "Barty" Butterfield was not a man of many fears, but the ones he had, he cultivated with the precision of a Swiss watchmaker. Chief among these was the falling coconut. Never mind that Barty lived in landlocked Nebraska, hundreds of miles from the nearest palm tree. He knew, deep in his calcified soul, that it was precisely *because* he lived in Nebraska that a rogue coconut, perhaps carried by an errant migratory bird with a peculiar fruit fetish, would seek him out. He wore a specially reinforced, titanium-plated bowler hat at all times, even to bed. "Preparation," he'd often mumble to his bewildered pet goldfish, "is the vanguard of survival."

Barty meticulously cataloged all potential, absurd dangers: spontaneous combustion from static electricity, rogue space debris from defunct satellites, being abducted by squirrels in a highly organized heist. He avoided ladders, wore a wetsuit in the shower, and only ate food that came in hermetically sealed, child-proof containers. His life was a fortress of over-precaution.

One blustery Tuesday, Barty was strolling home, titanium bowler gleaming, feeling a profound sense of accomplishment. He'd just navigated a particularly treacherous sidewalk crack without incident and dodged what he was convinced was a pigeon deliberately aiming for his head (likely a coconut-sympathizer). He paused, inhaling the crisp, non-tropical air, a faint, self-satisfied smile playing on his lips. "Take that, fickle finger of fate!" he whispered, adjusting his hat.

Just then, a museum truck, emblazoned with "ANCIENT CURIOSITIES: FRAGILE!" on its side, hit a pothole with the force of a small meteorite. From its precarious cargo, a perfectly preserved, petrified dinosaur egg – heavy as a small boulder, and roughly the size of a very, very large coconut – dislodged, arced gracefully through the Nebraska sky, and landed with a sickening *thud* directly upon Barty's reinforced bowler hat.

The titanium held. Barty, however, did not. His last thought, a dim, fading glimmer in the encroaching dark, was, "Well, at least it wasn't a coconut." Life, it seemed, had a rather twisted sense of humor.