When Cows Fly

​This is going to be the most unusual story you have ever heard. It might be related to “the one that got away” that fishermen tell, because you have nothing to rely on except my word. 

This is a story about you-know-what… the “S” word. The thing that farmers shovel in their barns. Sooner or later, s*** catches up with you. There is that saying that everyone knows, that “S*** happens”. Sooner or later it will happen to you. I think that saying was intended to be a metaphor, but one day it happened to me for real. I have no explanation but to tell the story, the story of s***. 

I was driving in the country. It’s an opener equal to the likes of “two nuns and a priest walked into a bar”. Out there all alone in the country anything could happen. You could see an unidentified flying object, or come across a crop circle. You could be abducted and prodded and poked by strange beings, taken up in a beam of light and left to tell the tale. You, and those cows whose organs have been surgically removed with no trace of a scar. 

Unidentified flying objects do not usually include the topic of s*** but that is what my story is about. I got hit while driving by the mysterious wrath of God descending on my head in the form of s*** in sufficient volume to make me understand that someone up there was very, very angry. 

Yes, you read right. I was driving through the country and….. suddenly the skies opened and my car was drenched with a long brown liquid streak that obscured the windshield in a murky trail from the front end of the car over the roof and down the back. It was not a small inoffensive s*** like baby poo. It was as if the saying had come true, “when cows fly”... Verily, I have seen signs and wonders descend from the heavens, and the evidence hath befallen my car. 

After almost crashing into a tree stopping the car, I got out, scratched my head and perused the “damage”. I did not know how to explain to myself, that my car was covered front to back with a huge and nasty streak of s***. As these things go, the salt in the wound was that it was a hot day and I was nowhere near any source of water. I was in backwoods country, covered in s***. It is not a predicament most people picture themselves in. 

Breaking down on the side of the road can leave you feeling helpless. You can be under the car with a jack trying to change a tire in the middle of the darkness. While that has happened to me, it was nothing like the dilemma of what to do on a hot day with a car covered in s***. I pumped the wiper blades from inside the car, hoping to get a head start with a bit of washer fluid. It did not help. The huge smear of s*** just got smearier. The wiper blades virtually got stuck with that awful brown smear that was just mushed everywhere. I did the only thing I could do, I gingerly grabbed some very leafy branches and started to scour. 

I am not saying that I did a good job. Lack of water does not help in clearing s***. The dust that country roads kick up, only compounded my s*** problems. I looked like something out of a dystopian movie plot, as I limped back into the city at half the posted limit, with my head craned out the left side window trying to see where I was going. Of course, I got stopped by a cop. It seems that s*** is also against the law. The officer got more irate as I tried to explain. He got out his citation pad and then scratched his head. “Look, whatever you are playing at, I am sure what you are doing is illegal, but lucky for you, I can’t think of what I would fine you with” he said. “I don’t think there is a specific rule about s*** in the books. I am going to let you off with a warning. You should be happy you got stopped by a cop as kind as me. Now go find a carwash and get this thing off the road. You are a danger to traffic”. 

I limped away covered in s*** with a bruised ego to boot. I went into a carwash. It took two times through, to make some headway with my particular problem. There were people standing around looking at my car. I smiled and waved. I did not try to make up an explanation. At a certain point, there is no point. Now, when people say, “Oh yeah, well s*** happens” I can only affirm that it does. 

Someone told me that the culprit was a mud hen. I tried to look this up and cannot to this day verify that it is true. Apparently, mud hens carry around their dinner for an entire month or more. They are large birds, and when they finally let go of the steaming treasures in their bowels, you might think that cows fly because it defies belief.

So there you have it. My story for which I have no explanation to this day. When I read about those who babble on about unidentified flying objects out in some rural area far from civilization, I can relate. I feel their pain when they try to explain. 

It could be that cows fly. To this day I am occasionally beset with wonder, that odd affliction of those on whom God decides to land some vast revelation from above. Mine came in the form of s***. I know firsthand, that s*** happens, and when it does you will have no more explanation than I do. It could just be the great levelling of fortunes, that you have had a long enough span of good luck and you need an object lesson that will make you more compassionate toward your fellow man. 

Yeah though I pass through the valley of the Shadow of Death, I shall fear no evil. Because you know, s*** happens. And cows really do fly sometimes, I think.