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Cows Gone Wild
The cows were devastated, because the cowboys drove all of the steers to
market. Why the cows cared wasn't clear, because the steers were castrated
in prepubescence. They yielded their prairie oysters before their bellows
became baritone. They could yodel like Slim Whitman. Perhaps the vacas
preferred them because steers were more sensitive, not having testosterone
poisoning.
Now that the steers were gone, the bulls were back and not having any
vaqueros to buck off, they took to chasing the vacas. When they weren't
chasing, they hung around, leaned against the cottonwood trees, poked each
other with their horns and said, "Get a load of the udders on that one."
It was too much for the bovine beauties. They were not content. They
stopped giving milk to the creamery and there was no ice cream to be had.
It was July, going on August, hadn't rained for forty days and forty nights.
The earth cracked. Fissures spread so wide that some of the skinny heifers
fell in. Theirs were the most pitiful cries, because though there was
little grass on the thirsty hardscrabble, there was even less in the holes.
The bony bovines in the depths of the crevasses took to eating grubs and
worms. When a feral hog grubbing for truffles fell in, they ate the poor
porker. Gradually they forsook their vegetarian diet and became carnivores.
Their eyes glowed crimson.
As the drought gouged the gaps in the prairie wider and longer, they
eventually joined with the ravines in the badlands and made them
worse-lands. The ravaging ruminants escaped and roamed the scorched earth,
blood dripping from their teeth as they searched for flesh to sate their
feral lust.
It was about that time that they formed a symbiotic relationship with a gang
of rodeo clowns turned bikers who had grown too big to fit in the barrels
and developed an intense dislike for bulls. They were driven mad by the
lack of ice cream in the stultifying heat. In their eyes, the hellish
Holsteins were avenging angels.
The mournful cries of the beefy sisters back at the ranch beseeched them.
When the cannibal cows arrived, the bulls took them for a traveling herd of
mail order brides, but the grisly girls would have none of it. The rodeo
clowns distracted the obnoxious males by mooning, shouting "Yee-Ha!",
popping wheelies and revving their Twin Cam 88s. While the bulls snorted
and attacked the bikers' buttocks, the skinny cows pounced on the ring-nosed
Romeos and ate them, every last one. Then the clowns played baseball with
the eyes of the dead toros, using their long bones for bats and their
hollowed skulls for bases.
John A. Ward was born on Staten
Island, attended Wagner College in the early 60's, sold his first poem to
Leatherneck magazine, and became a scientist. He is now in San Antonio
running, writing and living with his dance partner. Links to his work can
be found at Blog.
Email: John A. Ward
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