Don’t Make ’em Mad
by Tanya E. E. E. Schmid
Nobody knows which cow started it, but it began on Flemming’s farm. People almost understood why. Old Man Flemming’s fields were overrun with ragweed and bittercress, his animals more ribs than flesh. His eldest, Jake Flemming, whipped the cows as often as his father whipped him.
They ate the boy first. The cows did. All that remained were his worn-out high-tops covered in gooey saliva. Before the cops could figure out what had happened, the whole family had disappeared—rusty screen door swinging in the wind, their fat cows smiling, breaking through fences, roaming greener acres.
The news spread fast between the animals. Some say the crows told. Next thing you know, the Jensons, the Murrays—one farming family after another disappeared. Ecstatic cows romped through the fields, reunited with their calves. Not just cows, either. Pigs burst from their tight pens and ran furrows through potato patches. Chickens escaped stifling coops and pecked furiously at sun-warmed corn. Horses dashed across hillocks gone to bloom and gorged themselves on grass that was to be harvested for hay.
The animals were smart. At most, a blood-stained kitchen apron was left behind. Only Sullivan’s Orchards survived. Probably because vegetarians smell like incense.
I feel sorry for the guys from out of town who tried to round up all the animals for the slaughterhouse. How could they know? The cops found their jeep nose down in a ditch between what was once Bolton’s Dairy and the Hanson Hog Farm.
Mad cow disease, folks say.
The Molotov Cocktail 