Cow Farts And Doobies

/ Diane Henders

Hubby and I were discussing cow farts the other day.

We didn’t suddenly turn to each other at the dinner table and exclaim, “Cow farts!”  No; our conversation actually began as a semi-serious discussion of global warming.  It’s just that whenever I’m present, the conversation tends to go rapidly sideways.  I blame this on my brain’s annoying tendency to latch onto useless but amusing bits of trivia.

In this case, the factoid in question was:  Cow farts are a major contributor to global warming gas emissions.  Because of the fermentation that takes place as organic matter moves through their four stomachs, large quantities of methane gas are produced.  The gas is, erm… expelled.  Human beings raise lots of cattle.  Lots of cattle equals lots of cow farts. (Update: Sadly, the Blog Fodder has pointed out below that this is only a factoid, not a true and useful fact.  But I still like the idea of farting bovine enviro-pirates.  It’s good to be a fiction writer.)

Anyway, that got me thinking about cows in general.  You know how some things are intrinsically funny?  For example, bananas are funnier than oranges.  Turnips are funnier than, say, lettuce or radishes.  And cows are funnier than horses or just about any other farmyard animal.

I think that’s partly because of another little piece of trivia that may or may not be true, but it sounds logical and I want to believe it:  Cows spend pretty much their entire lives intoxicated because alcohol is another by-product of the digestive fermentation process.  Maybe that explains why they’re so placid.  Whenever I see a cow I giggle at the thought that behind those big brown glassy eyes is an animal that might be completely snockered. (Update:  Nope, this one’s not true, either.  Bummer.)

And cattle are funny-looking.  They could have been designed by a six-year-old kid:  a big rectangular block supported by four knobby legs with a head stuck on the front.  Oh, and a tail on the back.

The tail always makes me laugh, too.  The skinny rope with a tassel on the end is funny in itself, but what truly amuses me is that cows and lions have exactly the same tail.  I don’t know whether to congratulate the cow on its badass likeness to the king of the beasts or offer my condolences to the lion for getting tagged with the same hair-handle as the ungulates.

And if you’ve ever seen a cow jump a fence (they are actually capable of jumping, though not very high), that in itself is giggle-worthy.  Unless the cattle in question are escaping your pasture, in which case it’s not very funny at all.

Anyway…

Fasten your seatbelts, ‘cause here comes a topic-swerve that’s only loosely linked to cow farts:  doobies.  (That’s a funny word in itself.)  Yes, I’m talking about bombers, joints, reefers; wacky tobaccy in general.

How is this related to cow farts?  Well, cow farts are funny.  And doobies are funny cigarettes.

Why am I making this extremely tenuous connection?

Because it’s a cheap and sleazy segue into announcing that Book 9, SPY HIGH has cover art and a release date!  Woohoo!  My beta readers blasted through it during the Christmas holidays – thanks, guys, you ROCK!  Now I only have to do some final polishing and it’ll be ready to roll out the door.  The tentative release date is January 16, 2015 (to be confirmed next week).

And yes, that is a funny cigarette on the cover…

Spy High book 9 cover

After four uneventful months spent guarding her boss’s eccentric hippy parents on an isolated raincoast commune, bookkeeper-turned-secret-agent Aydan Kelly is beginning to hope mildewed undies will be the only hazard she’ll face.

But some of the blissed-out flower children are not what they seem.  Aydan discovers a plot to kill her lovable charges, and in her fight to protect them she unearths the commune’s deepest secret.  Suddenly she’s facing dozens of enemies who threaten the lives of all the innocent commune members as well as her own.

She’ll only survive with a little help from her friends…

37 thoughts on “Cow Farts And Doobies”

  1. Pingback: Funny As A Turnip | Diane Henders

  2. I remember reading once (or twice, come to think of it) about a herd of cows that collectively turned nasty and attacked ramblers walking in their field. Cow farts weren’t mentioned in the / either article, Diane, but they must be to blame. Cows just don’t turn for no reason.

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    • What a cowtastrophe! But maybe it wasn’t the cow farts that made the cows turn nasty. Maybe the ramblers caused offence with a severe attack of burrito-butt and the cows were simply trying to protect themselves from the smelly invaders…

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  4. Having been born into basically a suburban environment, out of town, across the tracks sort of, but loving all things country, then having been thrust into real country as an adult and immediately having to learn how to milk a cow, I can attest to the truth of gas passing cows! Being trapped into a milking stall, close quarters, bucket in hand and a jovial Jersey cow that took forever to milk (she loved to torture me by holding back) she would periodically blast me with her built up gasses. Then, knowing how that made me feel, she’d turn her head around, look at me with those “big glassy eyes” and then Moooooooo at me. She was such a sweet heart.
    I still love the country but will let the cow milking go on by.
    You have just made my day and days to come with the announcement of #9. My finger is set to the “Buy Now with One Click” also and making sure my Kindle is completely charged. Happy dance goin’ on.

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    • Moondance, you reminded me that I used to have to milk cows when I was a kid. I was too little then to be really useful at milking, so I got to feed the kittens that always seemed to be around. That was my favorite thing, to squeeze out the milk and watch the kitties lick it off their faces! A flock of cats was always following me around. That was the part of farm life I liked best. The rest, not so much. 🙂

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    • Moondance, I think I’d be happy to let somebody else do the milking, too. Milking cows is one thing I never learned to do – my dad raised hogs. I did learn to milk goats at a friend’s place, but that’s another story. Maybe that’s why I still find cattle funny – if I’d grown up dealing with them I might not see the humour in the situation. 😉

      I really miss living on the farm, and I miss the kittens, too. It’s funny you should mention them, glbryant, because by an amazing coincidence there are kittens in Book 9…

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  5. I am only half way through your second book so I better read fast if I want to be ready for number nine. (As opposed to number two which is what goes along with cow farts.) Maybe if I take vacation. Hmmm. And two more coincidences. I lived near Silverside Road as a kid and used to ride a Honda Shadow. (theme from the Twilight Zone)

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    • LOL! Sadly, my lack of knowledge of the bovine digestive system has been exposed for all to see. About the only accurate observation I made was about their tails. But hey, I talk a good game, right? 😉

      And thanks – I’m excited about getting Book 9 out the door!

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  7. LOL! Only you would bury this kind of news under the title of “Cow Farts and Doobies.”

    (Honestly, you should keep a running LOL count. Maybe rate your posts on a LOL-meter. *grin*)

    And last but not least — YAY! Can’t wait to read #9!

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  11. We lived on a farm and raised cattle when I was a kid a hunnerd or two years ago. In general, you are absolutely correct on all counts regarding bovines. Please be advised, however, that one occasionally encounters a cow that CAN jump. We had one such. I’ve seen her stand flat-footed and jump a six-foot-tall corral fence. She didn’t exactly clear it, but she got over it, and it was no flimsy affair, that. Wild as a march hare, she was. The only reason dad said he kept her was because she raised good calves.

    She did, but I’m still calling, er B.S. on that. (Sorry.) He kept her because he couldn’t get her in the trailer to take her to the auction. 🙂

    One day, she chased him clear across the pasture, over a good fence, and into the back of his pickup. The next day, he gathered some help from the neighbors (I was probably six or seven at the time and not much help with the ordeal) and after a battle of epic proportions (and a great profane cloud of expletives from the grownups), off she went. We spent the next several days fixing fence. I was a big help with that.

    And you SO rock for getting Spy High done! Well, that amongst other things, of course. 🙂

    Great cover! I am fully prepared to hit the ‘buy with one click’ button on Amazon so they can squirt it straight into my Kindle pile.

    Okay, so when’s Book 10 gonna hit the shelves? No pressure… 🙂

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    • Oh, so demanding! Probably later this year for Book 10 – stay tuned…

      And so much for the whole “placid cow” image. I was laughing out loud imagining the scene! Six feet is amazing – I’ve seen them jump about three feet and even that looked vastly improbable. You must have had the Olympic cow-jumping champion.

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      • One takes the bad with the good. The good, in this instance, was a bull we had. A Brahma cross (probably one-eight Brahma) example of the breed. Had a sizable but not enormous hump. Huge shoulders. Thick, horizontal horns. Moved like a cat and rippled when he walked. A thoroughly impressive fellow.

        We raised him from a weaned calf, and he was gentle as a lamb. Good, in this case, became too good. He loved to have his back scratched. He’d stretch his neck out and lean into you for more. And if you quit before he was ready, he’d follow you around and nudge you gently until you started again.

        As he grew, we noticed that nudging gently means something different to a thousand pound bull than it does to most humans. When he passed two thousand pounds, his playfulness became more than a nuisance. I hated to see him go, but it got to the point that he would open some seriously closed gates without even trying. Just to get his back scratched.

        But he fathered some great calves! And he hardly farted at all…

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  12. Sorry, Love. Methane is a byproduct of rumination, mostly from cellulose and other cell wall structures. That it poses some threat to the environment is a figment of the anti-food, anti-agriculture, anti-everything NGOs and their useful idiots. There were at one time 66 million bison in North America, while there are roughly 30 million cows give or take. Bison ate only roughages (NO grain) so produced more methane than the equivalent cow whcih gets some grain. The by products of rumen fermentation are called volatile fatty acids (VFAs): acetate, propionate and butyrate being the big three with sometimes lactate in an acidic rumen. Alcohol may be produced in small amounts by some microbes during fermentation but is usually quickly grabbed by other microbes to make VFAs. No alcohol gets past the rumen in any quantity unless it is ingested in eg windfall apples that are starting to ferment at which point you will see some happy drunken cows. And you thought I couldn’t remember anything from school!

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    • Aw, bummer. And here I was loving the idea that cows were all happy-drunk farting enviro-pirates. But that’s okay, I’ll come to terms with my disappointment. *sigh*

      Or better still, I’ll just pretend they’ve all been eating fermented apples. It’s good to have a vivid imagination. 🙂

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      • If excessive methane production is bad for the environment, then some of the local bars that have such things as half-price beer and free burrito night should be forcibly closed. Methane production notwithstanding, that might not be a bad idea anyway… 🙂

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          • There’s something better. Saw it on TV a few years back. An elderly couple tried to market something like an adult diaper with a section in the back that held an activated charcoal panel. Yep, fart filters. The gent actually fabricated the drawers after decades of complaints from his wife. She said they worked very well.

            I haven’t seen any on store shelves yet, but I think he did manage to get a patent on ’em.

            But why do I get a visual of a shiny, reflective thong? Never mind. Forget I mentioned it. 🙂

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  13. Geez Diane! You’re a riot! And it’s twice as funny when I’m sitting here at work reading this stuff!! No one has ANY idea what I’m laughing at so they think I’m just crazy/weird. Sooooooo looking forward to Book 9; and yes, definitely love the cover art!! As always, all the best to you and your talent. Keep the good stuff coming!!!

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