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Cow Initiative: A final solution to "mad cow disease." |
From the Files of Fortean Slips
by D. Trull
Enigma Editor
dtrull@parascope.com
Because of the outbreak of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, better known as mad cow disease, the British government has taken drastic steps to slaughter a large portion of its bovine population. All cattle over the age of thirty months are to be killed and incinerated -- 700,000 dead head a year for the next six years.
As horrible a biological and economic disaster as this is, some outside observers have come up with some interesting alternative solutions to the problem. Certain Hindu groups, for example, have taken the opportunity to point out the wrongdoings of those cultures which consume animals that they hold to be sacred. They must suppose that if a few sinful Big Mac lovers contract the disease, which fatally attacks the brain's nerve cells, then it's an okay trade-off that 4.2 million cows have to get slaughtered.
Meanwhile, a Cambodian newspaper has suggested that the condemned herds be shipped to Cambodia. They'd like for the cows to roam free on the Cambodian countryside. But wait -- the idea is not to offer them humane sanctuary, but to let them detonate the millions of land mines left by years of armed conflict. "The plan is simple, practical, and will make mincemeat of the problem overnight," wrote the newspaper. Once you've lived with the possibility of getting blown up every time you take a stroll, I guess acres of biohazard-grade hamburger is probably worth the smell.
Following these two examples, I'm prepared to offer my own self-interested analysis of the situation and my own modest proposal on what we should do about it. But unlike the other guys, I've covered all the bases. There is no down side. It's a win-win. Check this out:
Who is it, aside from Ronald McDonald and Dave Thomas, who enjoys slaughtering cows more than anything in the universe?
Aliens.
Everybody knows that cattle mutilation is like the interstellar equivalent of golf for extraterrestrials. They do it, they love it, they can't get enough of it.
All we have to do is leave the mad cows in Great Britain, maybe quarantine them all in Ireland or something, and then do a little deep space P.R. Have the Greenwich Observatory transmit radio waves of "moooo"s toward Alpha Centauri twenty-four hours a day. Send out some more Voyager probes with a side of beef next to the map to Earth. Then we sit back and wait for our little green buddies to come clean up this mess for us.
The British public wins because they're safe from contaminated meat.
The British government and the European Union win because they don't have to foot the bill for the slaughter.
The cows win because they get to trade the horror of mass execution for the honor of representing their planet in intergalactic anatomy texts.
Scientists and UFO fans win because surveillance cameras and radar systems are sure to provide concrete evidence of extraterrestrial life at last.
And the aliens win because they get to whoop it up at the biggest cow-slaughtering hootenanny they've ever been invited to! Sure, some of the aliens may end up catching mad cow disease, but that's another plus for us: maybe they'll get sick and disoriented enough to let us catch one of them, or maybe they'll crash a flying saucer for us to keep. That would be cool.
Write your congressman, write NASA, write the Beef Council, write John Major and the surviving Beatles, and let them know that TSCI (the Trull Strategic Cow Initiative) is the only way to bring this crisis to a sure and swift conclusion.
(c) Copyright 1996 ParaScope, Inc.
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