Part 2: Grandpa's Wonderful Cows

GRANDPA'S WONDERFUL COWS

The sun [son?] shineth upon

the dunghill, and is not corrupted.

                                                                              ---Lyly

GRANDPA'S FERACIOUS COWS---he favored Guernseys,

but there typically would be at least one beigy, gentle-

eyed, black-nosed Jersey in the bunch---drifted about

the immediate cottage property, leaving indelicate, steamy

droppings in random locations, obliging me to keep

a sentry eye out, as I engaged in solitary play or exploration,

lest I plunge my whippersnapper bare toes into

an exothermic, slabby slosh that would have been

an excretion too fresh to have priorly been present

for noting.

The moisty, yeasty, palpable warmth---from heat of sun, or left

over from the releasing bovine, or a blend of both---felt

pretty good on my appreciative skin, particularly when

outside temps were a tad frosty; but plopping into a puffy,

yielding pie did require sometime afterwards a for-sure

inconvenient sojourn to the frigid river's rocky, slippery bank

for a painfully careful icy water rinse of jammy feet before I

could earn a reluctant, frowning, dubious welcome home

from my mother, who guarded with excessive suspicion

the screened main door of the cottage living room's entrance.

On a typical balmy summer's day, I was wont to make

at least one sporting attempt to discover whether I could

rabbit artfully across the front yard-patch area---an unfenced

region with decidedly ill-defined borders---at peak

broken-field sprint without, in an alarming instant of flagging

focus, mistakenly contacting one of the fumier piles, piles

that were occasionally stacked, in slipshod states

of sometimes eye-catching ripeness, in gloppy-floppy,

fissiparous heaps two and three deep over a lone, obviously

attractive, profoundly stinky landing spot.

At times my zeal overshot athleticism---like someone at

potluck whose portion-assessing wide eyes come bigger

than famished stomach.

There was no overweening adjudicator that could ruin it

for me. In the event of a close call, I acted as umpire

in chief in making solid judgments that were wonderfully

unappealable to higher authority.

(to be continued in Part 3)