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Let's spare the gross puns and cut to the chase: Cornell University's College of Veterinary Medicine has managed to cost the esteemed Ivy League institution around $212,000 in destroyed horse semen. That's enough horse semen to pay for four years of undergraduate tuition at the university—if, in fact, tuition could be paid in horse semen. (Unfortunately, it cannot be, though we'll see if Obama's education reforms change that.)

This unhappy saga of seminal fluid stretches back to 2004, reports The Ithaca Independent, when the school began storing 212 units of "unique" and "valuable" semen collected from an apparently very special Holsteiner horse in a "defective cryogenic storage tank." The following year, the owner of Fox Run Farm LLC, a nearby training facility, tried to collect the goods; the university realized its booboo and, instead of trying to replace the rare equine gunk, mailed her a $2,045 to cover samples valued at more than ten times as much. (The shame!) She filed her intent to sue earlier this year, and The Cornell Daily Sun reports that a jury found the school liable for the damage this week.

Cornell has declined to comment on ongoing litigation, but the moral of the story is pretty clear here: don't look a gift horse in the eye, and also never store $200,000 worth of horse semen in a defective cryogenic storage tank.

Top photo by sach1tb via Wikimedia Commons.

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