Hawkeye was extremely bored. The kind of bored that eats away at the corners of your mind until you either need to occupy yourself, or burn something.

Being that he couldn't find any matches, Hawkeye opted to occupy himself in whatever other way he could find. However, BJ had gotten as far away as possible from his ranting tentmate, Colonel Potter was out for a ride on Sophie, and Charles was heavily armed, seeing as how lunch was generally considered a weapon 'round those parts.

"Oh Radar!"

He sang cheerily as he sprung into the clerk's office, succeeding in unintentionally ruining the daily report by startling Radar into typing a "P" where an "O" should have been.

"Whaddaya want, Cap'n Pierce?"

"Only to educate my favorite uneducated Corporal. Do you know much about the human brain?"

"You know much about cows?"

But Hawkeye went on talking about one of his favorite subject - parts of the human brain.

"There's the cerebellum, the corpus colosum, the frontal lobe, the medulla oblongata, the occipital lobe, the parietal lobe, the pituitary gland, the pons, the spinal cord, and the temporal lobe."

Radar rolled his eyes in slight annoyance and, without looking up, said to Hawkeye "The parts of a cow's stomach are the rumen, reticulum, omasum, and abomasum. Cows are attracted to shiny things, y'see, and when they eat metal, it sits in the bottom of the rumen. That's the one that breaks down all the grass'n'stuff that they eat. Anyway, after awhile it works through the lining of the stomach an' if it goes the wrong way, it can get stuck in their heart. It's called Hardware Disease."

Hawkeye raised his eyebrows and grinned.

"Touché."

•••

Several years later Hawkeye stood, his hands in his pockets, looking proudly at the neatly painted sign in front of the Ottumwa Area Veterinary Clinic. Radar appeared from inside the building to stand beside him, dressed in a long white labcoat, and only came up to about the tall man's upper arm.

"I see Korea got you over your fear of blood."

"Mostly..."

Radar said slowly. "I still get a little squeamish sometimes, but it's worth it to see those animals walk, hop, slither, and trot out the door with their happy owners." The bespectacled man smiled happily at Hawkeye, and Hawkeye realized that Radar was no longer the naive boy he had known during the war.

"Well." He said with that all-too-familiar impish smile "To be a veterinarian is an admirable profession, to be sure, but working at Portland General, I still make..." He bent down and whispered something in Radar's ear, grinning. Radar raised an eyebrow and shrugged.

"That's ok Hawkeye, 'cause owning this place, I make..." And he whispered something into the ravenhaired doctor's ear that was obviously a rather large number, seeing as how Hawkeye's eyebrows shot up and he squeaked out

"Touché!"