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I've answered this question before, actually, in 2002.:
The Highway Shoe is the egg of the elusive Forest Refrigerator.
It is a strange lifecycle, in which, late on moonless nights, the sexual organs of the forest refrigerator, looking remarkably like men's and women's undergarments, stealthily make their way to the median strips of highways. The female lays an egg (which, in it's unfertilized state looks much like an unrolled condom.) The male then fertilizes it and rapidly drags it into the nearby road to incubate. It must happen quickly, because, a few minutes after fertilization, the egg develops an extremely durable casing, the familiar Highway Shoe. Their purpose completed, the sex organs crawl away into the underbrush and die.
The highway shoe remains in the road for several weeks until a retreadded tire hits it. When this fortunate event occurs, the Shoe adheres to the retread and rapidly insinuates its genetic material into it. When the insinuation is complete, the shoe loses all of its previous durability and rapidly decays, going through tennis shoe, Birkenstock, and flip flop stages, ending as a small black lump, indistinguishable from loose highway patch. The retread containing the genetic material detaches from the tire bearing it and becomes the larval form of the forest refrigerator, variously called the black or rubber armadillo, the Trucktire, or the What-the-Fark-is-that! Over the course of a number of days, the larva crawls to a secluded spot deep in a nearby forested area, until it finds a number of nearly empty beer cans. It collects these and begins its transformation to the adult form, passing through stages resembling various kitchen appliances (toaster, mixer, microwave, stove) until it has reached its adult form, the Forest Refrigerator.
Some time later, the doors wilt and fall off, the sex organs come forth, and the cycle begins again.
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Light a man a fire, and he will be warm while it burns.
Set a man on fire, and he will be warm for the rest of his life.
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