Get the feedThings you don't expect to hear your kids say
Saturday, Jul 18th 2009
Although my daughter Camille was born in Kentucky, she grew up in upstate New York and Center City Philadelphia. I feared she was losing a sense of her rural Tennessee roots when she told someone she'd never had a biscuit. However, we've lived in a small town for the past three years, in the mule capital of the world. Today I realized she has sufficiently returned.
Have you ever wondered what happens after a cow dies? There are locations throughout the country where farmers can take their bovine carcasses and leave them -- in the heat for days, in sweltering 95 degree heat -- for days. There's one about thirty seconds from my house, which means that every now and then, you walk, bicycle, or drive past some pretty ferocious scenes. Vultures perched in trees, flies, smell, and the actual carcasses.
It's as horrifying as it sounds.
Periodically, whoever has the unfortunate job of picking up dead cows slowly meanders up and takes them away... unless he thinks of something better to do.
Today, on the way to the farm, David's dad called to warn me not to drive over where some cows had been baking in the heat this week. They'd just taken the bodies away -- mostly.
Anyway, I was explaining to the kids how we needed to watch out for the "pick up spot," when Camille said something that I never thought I'd hear her say.
"Don't you just hate it when people leave their dead cows laying around?" she asked.
"It's just so rude."
Nancy French
Nancy French is an author, commentator, and mother. Her next book, about the year her husband spent in Iraq is due out July 4, 2011. Connect with her on Facebook at www.facebook.com/NancyAndersonFrench and follow her on Twitter at https://twitter.com/nancyafrench.
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