Melissa Prunty Kemp

Scientists have taken up a new breeding process.  This process promises to save Kansas, Oklahoma and Arkansas from global warming.  If saved, these states can enjoy an end to the winds that obliterate their lives, leave slabs of rubble where homes once stood. Through years of tireless research, biotechs have engineered a fartless cow.  Because cows fart methane by the ton, an ever increasing death threat.  Escaping methane like a night-thief, like the Grim Reaper, seeps out of fracked earth.  Because we fractured the coffin in which it was buried. Lying low to the ground like a snake parting summer-baked grass, methane curls around unsuspecting sleepers, becomes their last dreaming gasp. Methane cleaves through melting glaciers. Water escapes leaving an aquamarine alley.  Because we keep releasing methane from cars and rising temperatures and melting permafrost and ice caps. Who knew Antarctica, most formidable cold mistress, could melt? We keep opening the earth’s basement door looking to steal its first grade rock collection.

 

Certainly, science will find a solution.  Cows will be bred to stop gassing. Where will the gas go?  The cow will receive an artificial stomach to digest its artificial food.  This food like substance will be specifically engineered to deliver complete nutritional balance.  Gas and heat, unfortunate byproducts of the newly upgraded cow, will be converted to energy.  This energy will power the equipment used to slaughter the cow.  Costs of upgrading each cow will be offset by significantly lowered energy costs. The farmer and the cow will greatly benefit. But this is only a temporary measure. Artificial stomachs are only good for the life of the cow.  So a new gene will be introduced to tell the cow what to do.  Because obviously the cow has been egregiously mistakenly farting all these years. I’m sure if you asked, any decent cow would readily apologize for their poor manners had they known. But now, it’s too late.  The only solution to the menace of methane is to breed a cow who knows better, has impeccable etiquette, hold his gas for deposit into the correct energy recycler.