01/09/01

My first case, if you want to call it that, actually involved the mystery of another dead Holstein belonging to ol’ Porch Rot---it was a two year old heifer found sprawled out and bloated in the pasture. That was in ‘98, not long after I sold my milking herd to Cornelius Kuykendall (my gender-confused, likely soon to be ex-son-in-law from Texas) and found myself in need of something to do with myself. Well, it was more than that really---I needed something to keep myself occupied as I underwent chemotherapy and a chestectomy to stave off the hand of death from male chest cancer. (I‘m fine now. Had my chests fixed up and have been given a clean bill of health, so you‘d never know I was ever sick, thank fucking goodness.) It was also just before Clean Phil went missing this latest time. Seems a wedding balloon had landed on the Palfrey place from afar which soon suffocated the animal when the snack became lodged in its airway. After the balloon was recovered from the carcass by Cadaver Dog, it was found that it— the bovine death agent— had been custom printed for the nuptials of two apparent freaks named Manfred and Gladiola, who were quickly identified in an internet search at the Goshen library — due in no small part to the uniqueness of their fucked up names— as residents of Reistertown, Maryland. After they received a picture of Porch Rot’s poor pathetic heifer, sprawled and bloated in the field with an explanation that their wedding balloon had wrought the calamity, Manfred and Gladiola--- flush with wedding cash--- were quick to send out a check for $1,500 to Porch Rot for restitution. Here it is the 21st century and I’m not sure the bastard has any comprehension, even now, of the power of the World Wide Web. If only he had shown the same kind of awe for a Mars rock landing at his feet as he did for that little shitty bit of information the library’s computer cranked out for me just by typing in the names Manfred and Gladiola into a search engine.

Good fucking gracious.