Part 5: Grandpa's Wonderful Cows

GRANDPA'S WONDERFUL COWS

Patience can be a virtue—

but only if you wait just long enough.

                                                                       —barbsdad

OF IMPORT WAS THE LIE of the pie---or slice or dollop.

Did it possess mass enough to flatten the mongrel grasses

and weeds beneath, making an agreeable taction with

underlying terra firma? Was it on the level, or did it lie

sloped on declivitous soil?

Perhaps part of it edged a stone, the remainder hanging

and dangling earthward. A knurly fallen branchlet may

have disrupted still another's original fall from grace

(or perhaps from amazing boss Grace herself), sifting

it into sloppy portions on erratic splashdown.

My predilection was for a unit that was of a decent

bigness; that was not reposing in a too-low depression

that impeded proper drainage or siphonage; that was

girded by feral grasses that snugly wedded the land;

and that had a fruitful amount of curing behind it---

with sufficient seasoning, moreover, for angleworms

to have had ample opportunity to chance upon it,

to benefit from fermenting nutrients within that

exuded and sedimented from it, and thereafter to

flourish (fester?) under it, and even up into it.

Covering the broad range from waterish goo to

a near-constipated solidness at incipient groundfall,

deterioration---from the effects of the passage of

time, the lusty feasting of a few generations of

seething maggot colonies, the honey-combing

beetle, weevil, centipede, and wriggler workovers,

and the exposure to a mingle-mangle of weathering

days---led to a near-final-step-before-returning-to-

soil dry, powderful consistency that was all that

then lingered for plants to metabolize.

I learned to read them to an approximate perfection

for my purposes. If I were going fishing, for instance,

an effective ambidextrous technique for bait gathering

was to flip a moderately rigid, semiparched cow pie

with an index finger, draw out a startled, wiggly wormling

with the pincering free hand for adding to my collection,

and afterwards utilize the bantam crawler for enticive

trout chow on the end of a bent-back straight pin that

was square-knot attached at the bottom extremity of

a piece of often overfragile white string confiscated

from a dusty, sundries-stuffed drawer somewhere

in one of the barns, the upper length of line snugly

tied around the encircling vee cut near the top of

a pocket knife-harvested willow branch fishing pole,

or preferably ---

as I learned better how to cadge from farm-encroaching

fishermen trespassers when accostable, since not

even a penny for purchase was available to me

--- preferably, in lieu of the pin, a store-bought size 8

trusty Eagle Claw fishhook, Eagle Claw being my

favorite brand.

But not just any old desiccated cow pie sufficed,

naturally, as I've already indicated. It would be

a dreadful waste of effort to turn them all.

I instead employed my keen mind and discerning

eyes to select the requisite dryness, size, heft,

how it lay on the ground, and what kind of terrain

that was, so that when I activated the ambushing

pancake-flip sequence, I laid bare one or more

wormlets (although sometimes only after a spell

of focused finecombing)---and occasionally

a treasure trove of them---in essentially every case,

my percentage of success at times approaching

a hundred.

Open-field pasturage abutted the cottage on three

and a half sides, making an appealing environment

for the sizable herbivores to at least graze through

if not loiter there, the bulk of them gravitating to

the grassy grounds; but on occasion they retreated

into nearby shadeful forest, principally in

uncomfortably hot or rain-whippy weather.

The group was composed of individual quadruped

souls who became connected to me through

close proximity over months---and yes, even years---

on a personal level that went unnoticed

and unobserved by preoccupied-with-survival

adult humans who, in ghostly manner and at

a respectable distance, floated about my young

life.

Aside from barn-stored hay, a bit of green silage,

and a mildly meager measure of oats supplied

by my grandfather, the bossies got their druthers

in the character, caliber, and profusion of wild

fodder they devoured regularly, usually inflating

one amid each set of tummies to rounded tubby

satisfaction from a morning of docile browsing,

apt to be thereafter succeeded by hours of

contemplative, small boy-mesmerizing, gluey,

chewing-gumlike cud-chumping, while they in

concert sun-lolled with knobby-jointed fore

and aft limbs in supportive tuck below splendid cow

physiques---restless ears twitching in fleeting

rufflement, and automatic tails snap-slapping at

compulsively persistent, pestering flies---and with

their wide-set, softly lashed eyes held closed behind

dreamy, sedate, demure demeanors, equanimity intact ....

I wisely did not disturb them at such times, of course.

They were, as Nature required, working at assembling

new cow pies.

All for me to enjoy. I wouldn't've had it any other way.

(end)