StanCoFair, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
By Bill Stokes
Kickass, the doorstop dog, is reasonably certain that the keeper’s request to keep a cow on the balcony at the Vista West apartment he shares with Phyllis will be turned down, as was his request to keep a small flock of chickens.
But he misses cows, and chickens, and he feels strongly that they–cows and chickens, miss him, considering the impersonal lives they are forced to endure in this age of factory everything.
When you are old enough to remember hand-milking cows, your memory bank is obviously overdue for an update, but before that happens, the keeper would like to pay tribute to “Longlegs,” one of the three cows he was assigned to milk back in the hand-milking days. And in so doing, the keeper forgives Longlegs for kicking him into a manure-filled gutter when a fishhook in the keeper’s cap pricked into her flank. And he understands why she kept kicking until the keeper’s father rescued a manure-drenched keeper from the gutter and removed the keeper’s hat from Longlegs’ flank where it hung by a fishhook.
Should the keeper’s balcony-cow request somehow–perhaps through administrative error, be approved, he plans to name his cow “Longlegs II” and he will not be wearing a cap while milking her.
Photo by Bill Stokes