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Cow Tipping

The doctor pressed her stethoscope against the cow’s flank and thumped her finger against the bovine’s belly as if she were checking on the ripeness of a gigantic, hairy watermelon.

She had big brown eyes and weighed perhaps 110 pounds. The lady vet, that is; the cow, a Holstein, clocked in at about three-quarters of a ton.

“She has a displaced abomasum,” murmured the lady vet. Like any good dairy farmer, I knew that cows have a multi-chambered digestive system that is more complicated than the seating arrangement at a royal wedding. It had never occurred to me that a cow could somehow lose track of one of her stomachs.

“Not misplaced. Displaced,” explained the lady vet patiently. “Her abomasum has floated around to the wrong side. Nothing can get through, like when you twist a garden hose.”

Wanting to assuage the suffering of my unfortunate ungulate, I asked about options. “We could operate,” said the lady vet, “Or we could roll her.”

It pained me to point out the obvious, namely, that the cow likely didn’t own anything worth stealing. Lots of cowhide, but no wallet.

 “What I mean is that we would lay the cow down and roll her over. Sometimes when we do that we can get the abomasum to shift back into place.”

I replied that this plan sounded excellent except for the “lay the cow down” and “roll her over” parts. My experience was that it’s extremely difficult to tip a cow, urban legend notwithstanding. Did I mention that the lady vet weighed perhaps 110 pounds? And I’m no Hercules.

 “Not a big deal,” she replied. “We’ll just use the lariat.” The lady vet produced a lariat and looped it around the cow in several places, employing some mystical rope-tying technique that must have been handed down to her by a sage old cow shaman. In any event, when all was ready she grabbed the rope and hauled away and the cow responded by gently laying down. Then came the exciting part.

Cows do NOT enjoy being grabbed by their legs and rolled back and forth. Much cursing and sweating and grunting and dodging of flailing hooves ensued. Did I mention that the cow weighed three-quarters of a ton? And I’m no Hercules.

At length the lady vet called a halt to our labors. She again thumped upon and listened to the cow’s flank. Breaking into a grin, she said, “I think we did it!”

 And so we had. We let the cow rejoin her herd mates and she moseyed over to the bunk and commenced to munching hay. I was deeply pleased. The cow had dodged the surgery bullet and I had learned that cow tipping is a real – and useful! -- activity.

I asked the good doctor what types of animals had come under her care. “Snakes, rabbits, birds, you name it,” she replied. “If it was on Noah’s ark, I’ve probably treated it. Lizards. A camel. Water buffalo.”

 Impressed by her repertoire, I decided to put the lady vet to the test. I pointed to a nearby mother cat who was zealously grooming herself. The cat did this a lot; her life seemed to be an unending stream of bathing emergencies. “Probably has fleas,” said the lady vet. “Stop by my office and we’ll give you a special shampoo for your cat.”

Hearing the words “shampoo” and “cat” in the same sentence evoked emotions akin to hearing the words “nuclear” paired with “bomb.” Even so, it seemed like an astute diagnosis.

 Our farm mutt had been hanging around this whole time, observing the goings-on like a furry, unpaid supervisor. I showed the lady vet a spot where the canine’s coat had become thin and patchy.

“Could be ringworm,” she said. “Stop by my office and we’ll give you a special ointment.”

I asked the lady vet if casual exposure to said ointment and/ or shampoo would be hazardous for humans.

“No,” she replied. “But it would likely clear up any fleas or ringworm you might have!”

Striving to hide my sudden feelings of deep gladness, I asked the lady vet about some other symptoms. They included foul moods and intestinal bloating and cramping, which were inevitably followed by explosive eruptions that, reportedly, were loud enough to be heard in the next county.

“What species are we talking about?” she asked. I admitted that the symptoms described were actually mine.

“It would be totally unethical for me to treat a human,” she said. “But I could probably do a quick exam. Here, let’s loop this lariat around you and we’ll get started!”

You Stinker!

There is a group of people who are disdained for the way they smell. Not so much for the methods they use to smell, but more for the aromas they exude. This downtrodden demographic is commonly known as “guys.” The subgroup of this group that suffers the most is known as “husbands.”

Let’s face it: women have a much more acute sense of smell than men. Females can detect a single malodorous molecule at a hundred paces. Guys, on the other hand, can’t tell if a baby needs changing until the diaper’s odor has become strong enough to stop a charging water buffalo. This is just one reason why women are generally better mothers than men.

 It’s nearly always news to a guy when his wife informs him that he stinks. Certainly he may have noticed how those vultures fainted as they flew overhead. But that didn’t necessarily prove anything; after all, the vultures, being guys themselves, were probably playing it for laughs.

 Skillful husbands can intuit when their impending personal odors might be offensive to the female olfactory system. As such, many husbands have perfected the tactic that is known universally as “silent but deadly.”

“Oh my Lord!” a wife may suddenly exclaim in the middle of a gripping episode of Breaking Bad, “What did you eat? Week-old road kill?”

 “What?” the husband might protest. “I don’t smell anything! It was the dog!”

“We don’t even have a dog!” This is why the marriages that last the longest are those that involve household pets.

Foot odor has long been my personal albatross. Taking my clodhoppers off at the end of a long, hot day could empty the house. It was often broadly hinted that my socks would qualify as an EPA Superfund site. I, on the other hand, didn’t think that my feet smelled all that bad. But then again, that’s also how I feel about lutefisk.

Once, when I was a teenager, I acquired a blazing case of athlete’s foot. Just taking off my boots and peeling away my socks was pure agony. A search of the medicine cabinet yielded a small bottle of a liquid athlete’s foot remedy. Ignorant regarding such things, I doused my toes with a generous squirt of the stuff. I was later told that my bellowing could be heard several miles away. My toes felt like they had been thrust into a vat of molten lava! It was as if a miniature Fukushima were taking place between each little piggy.

 I shared this tale of woe with an uncle who replied that he obtained a wicked form of athlete’s foot while serving in the Merchant Marines. Upon returning home to the farm, he was able to cure the malady only after he cut the toes off his boots, thus exposing his tootsies to fresh air and sunshine. He was a tough guy, so I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he did this even though it was the dead of winter.

Then there is the issue of B.O. This can be a tricky topic, as there is no objective standards regarding what passes for “a little funky” and what constitutes “a stink that would scour the rust off a plowshare.”

 For instance, I was recently yakking with an elderly bachelor dairy farmer when he asked if I could give him a lift to his pickup which sat on the headland of a nearby field. I said of course.

 He climbed into the car and the air instantly filled with the choking aromas of dried dairy cow manure, diesel fumes and old guy B.O. These odors intermingled with a level of bad breath that can only obtained by washing down a cud of smokeless tobacco with a quart of stale coffee. I rolled my window down as we slowly bumped our way to the field.

“Something wrong with your eyes?” asked the old guy.

 “Must have got some dust in them,” I replied as I frantically gulped fresh air.

“Well, they sure are watering a lot. You should probably get that checked out.”

“I’ve been meaning to ask,” I said between deep tokes of outside air, “What’s up with that car air freshener hanging from the back of your cap?”

 “That’s to keep the skeeters away. Might look silly, but it works pretty darn good!” “What about the smell?”

 “That there’s a bonus feature. Wearing a air freshener all the time cuts way down on body odors. I bet I take only half as many baths!”

 Wow! It was hard to imagine how he’s still single!