Pest Control

The cows shuffled in the fields and summer dew coated blades of summer grass and made tiny rainbows for tiny insects stuffing their faces in the dirt searching for culinary treasures in a pesticide minefield out in my meadow. All this was boxed in by a water-logged wooden fence built long before the most recent batch of cows swept over the fields. So the lightshow persisted. The sky turned grey and the vista wasn’t even close to where the Old Guard had set their lowest expectations. Such is the lament of the downtrodden technology chief as he comes out of the ‘pen, camera flicker-flashes assaulting his eyes, cable news sitting in the cat[fish]bird seat. They salivate with half the story in one hand and half the story whirling around in a pesticide-saliva monsoon that washes all the little vermin back into their holes (hopefully cracking their necks and killing their dreams) ruining their afternoon scavenge under the dew rainbows. in. my. meadow.

We are all profane, she exclaimed – so I spun her around and dipped her down and then we released for a time and did a little jig with our hands to the whitest beat in the tune and maybe moved our feet a little and swung our hips in a measured manner to the right to the left and back again and since we’re advanced, we would spice it up with a right-right here and there; then we clasped hands again and pressed against each other and maybe mouthed the words but I didn’t sing out loud because that would kill the moment and she sang out loud and we both loved it for reasonably different reasons. The sky quicktimed in a glorious gradient of blue to yellow orange red purple and the climate followed suit from pleasant to warm cool summer-night and still.

A long walk to the long table with the one microphone in the middle took the cows by surprise. They pecked at the ground and meandered towards it solemnly, agents in tow. The cow who had it the worst, we’ll call her “Sam,” had black eyes and on this awful day, Sam’s eyes hurt a ton. She approached the microphone and nudged it with her nose, a low feedback puff filled the air. She sighed. Her tear ducts swelled. She nudged the mic again. Blood pumped viciously through her veins. Then she regurgitated the scandal in most uncertainless terms: there was the cheating, the lying, the late nights, the gambling…the whoring…the fraud, the gluttony, the pain, the psyche, the mortar, and the incidents of larceny.

After the press conference everything went back to normal: bees flew around and the army of insects scattered in the dirt in the grass forest and it rained and everyone spit and moist hairs sloped down everyone’s backs and the mud mixed with the pesticide and everything went down all around her but without her she’d been cut out – excised for being too ambitious, for letting her naively-formed dreams transform her permanently. Now she’s gone to far to go back, and gone to far to go forward.