Good morning, Wednesday road warriors! Yet another fine middle-day-of-the-week is upon us, and the commute is ahead of you.
Not to worry, the drive is problem-free today. No rain, no wind, no fog, no ice, no rocks… no gravel showers, no meteor showers, no April showers, no baby showers, no rain showers, no showers. Dang it… I forgot to take a shower. I take one almost every March (I skip primary number years, and thought for a while that 2019 was a prime number. Turns out, it’s not… it’s divisible by 673. There’s your important trivia for today), whether I need one or not, and still haven’t gotten to it this month. I guess I’ve got a few more days… I just keep forgetting! I’m sure those around me will continue to remind me every few minutes, though. Anyway, about the drive: unless any portion of your commute involves a Boeing 737 Max, you shouldn’t have any problems today.
Today is National Manatee Appreciation Day. No, the daytime showings are not half price, not even for students with ID or those over 65. This is a day to consider the big, sexy sea mammals… the ones with no natural enemies. They are herbivores, but apparently, they are not vegetarians. I’ll get back to that in a minute. Manatees are often called “sea cows,” because they are slow, perceived as gentle, and don’t seem to do a lot other than graze on plants. Incidentally, I have no idea if it’s true that pirates and seafarers of olde really got all hopped up on rum and tried manatee tipping. Ooh… more on THAT later, too…
There are only a few thousand manatees alive today. They were once plentiful, but hunting put a big dent in their populations (natives would simply summon the curious and friendly beasts with calls and bait, and when the manatee came close: whack!), and today, even though they are protected, they are frequently, albeit accidentally, hit and killed by boats. Poachers even still take a bite out of their numbers, too. They don’t have natural predators, and they are not predators themselves… but they still are killed by humans.
Okay, so herbivore… vs. vegetarian. Because this column is so deeply intellectual, I figured that we would dive into the exciting world of word definitions today. But, I’m confused… I can’t find a lot of difference between herbivores and vegetarians, although every definition I found of “vegetarian” indicated only humans can be vegetarian… animals cannot. A human herbivore would be a vegetarian… although, according to some sources, humans can not even BE herbivores, because THAT definition includes that a creature is physically adapted to eating ONLY plant materials. And, humans are omnivorous… yes, many claim that we are better suited for ONLY plant-based diets, and this may be true… but the FACT is that “humans eat both plants and meat, and so humans are therefore omnivores.”
Okay… I mentioned “tipping.” I’m talkin’ ‘bout cow tipping, here. See, I once lived in a dairyland, USA, and many of my pals were good ol’ boys from farms and ranches. And, them good ol’ boys have a different way of finding entertainment, than do our SoCal kids, whose lives appear to revolve around electronics and… well, electronics.
So, one fine evening, over a delightful keg of beer, it was decided that cow tipping needed to be scientifically tested. This is the hilarious act of quietly coming up beside a cow that is asleep—while standing—and giving it a quick shove, to cause the cow to fall over. For years, we’d heard tales from the old timers about this… and it was time to try it out, and see if it was even possible.
Only, see… it turns out that cows don’t sleep standing up to start with… they get down on the ground. And… sneaking up on ANY cow is quite a trick, too… especially given the fact that no cow tipping has ever been attempted by any other entity than a mostly-drunk group of rednecks, who make a lot of noise. Quiet, you say? HA! Even if there really were to be a full five seconds of quiet among a group like that, somebody would surely fart, just to break up the monotony of silence. And after that, silence would never occur again.
Okay, but even IF cows slept standing up… a gentle shove isn’t going to knock one over. Those bovines are well planted, with four wide-apart points of contact. And they are heavy, too, with a lot of inertia. Even a pretty good body slam from a football player probably wouldn’t be enough to cause a cow to stop grazing.
Still, we tried. Bottom line: there’s no such thing as cow tipping. I can testify to this, having conducted actual research. I never had my findings published, but the fact is, it just doesn’t work.
On the other hand… I will testify that running down road signs at 40 MPH in a lifted 4×4 truck with a brush guard DOES actually work, although, sometimes, the windshield gets broken. THAT one is real, for sure. Man… those were good times.
And hey… now my work IS published, albiet posthumorously.