Part 3: Grandpa's Wonderful Cows

GRANDPA'S WONDERFUL COWS

Not all evacuations were equal.

                                                                            ---barbsdad

IT WAS NO SURE THING that any particular dark-energy

expulsion's on-the-ground end result possessed

a material degree of firmness. Quality control did not

have a prominent place in Nature's scheme of things.

Cattle contract diarrhea like people who ail from food

poisoning, or a gastrointestinal flu or suchlike, making

colon contents on those occasions ultraliquidy, slurpy,

growl-grumbly; in an agitated, blankety-blank-blank hurry

to gush forth; and a mite unseeable when left abandoned

in assertive, air-seeking herbage, particularly when soppy

postrelease bowel contents had dispersed to a greasy

thinness adequate to permit landing amongst blades

of meadow grass rather than hotly smothering them.

A whimsical variation in spongy fun, but pretty much restricted

to warmish days for a pint-sized, summer-shoeless moppet

like me, was to ascertain if I could muster the skills necessary

for achieving a plotted distance over a gappy stretch of land

while skip-stepping, running, and leaping so as to strike

no unmarked ground in the process---in other words, make

every footfall one that stepping-stone tagged a sometimes

sticky cow pie (at times hopping like a frog off lily pads),

or slipped on one, or sank into it when it was a recent deposit

that reeked with a robust, frothy personality.

Not all evacuations were equal.

Some had been intestine-forged to remind me of a substantial

heel slice from a magnificent loaf of green-black bread, with

curvy, encrusted side up. One might be considerable enough

that cow cake would be an apt moniker. A rushing heifer

or yearling might spew sluggish dollops of dusky dung

astern on a sashaying overland dash, so cow biscuit might

do it as a label for most of those larger scraps.

Or at times try cow delicacy. Or cow pat. Or even, if the dimensions

were compelling for it, cows hors d'oeuvre.

And since some possessed no definable shape, plain old

prosaic cow muck might be as close to a description as

reasonably possible.

(to be continued in Part 4)