A hazy, blood-red sun rose gradually above the tall pines as I stood on the deck, scratching my dog's head. I trained my ears on the woods behind the house, where I heard the trademark bellering and ruckus of cattle on the loose. The scent of pancakes and frying bacon caught my nose for a second, and my wife's shrill reminder that I should come in and eat breakfast rang through my head like a Catholic schoolgirl scraping her sharpened nails across a blackboard. I quickly turned my ears back to the woods. Yep. The cows were out.

"God damned bastards," I said quietly.

A blue Chevy pulled into the driveway, sending little puffs of dust into the chilly morning air. My neighbors had arrived. It was Saturday, and today the plan was to round up and vaccinate my cattle.

The three of us left my dog to chew on a piece of deer hide that he had found and trampled into the kitchen to enjoy the spread my wife had made. I wanted nothing more than to savor a big plate of her fluffy pancakes with a mountain of butter slowly oozing its way through their steaming pores, and then bite down on a thick slice of smoky bacon, still coated with a fine layer of mouth-watering grease. I ate like a starving Russian prisoner ravaging an all-you-can-eat stroganoff buffet. There was no time to reflect on my wife's handiwork that morning, no time to consider how she had grown up only five miles down the road, her culinary skills carefully molded by her grandmother during hot summers spent concocting enormous feasts for family reunions and church picnics. The cows were out, and we had to kick it in the ass if we were going to get my beeves rounded up and vaccinated in the same day.

Skipping my morning shit was the furthest thing from my mind as the truck jostled down a muddy field road in search of my beeves. Father Time would tell if my pooping lése-majesté would come back to bite me.

We found the downed fence line. Most of the cows were in, but a bull and about thirty head were missing. I told Tim to stay behind and tack up the fence quick, and then go wait by the nearest gate to open it when I came driving back down the road with an angry bull and thirty pissed-off bessies ahead of the truck.

The situation went from bad to worse. Greg and I found my cows in one of my cornfields, munching on the tender green leaves of the six-foot-high plants. I parked the truck facing the opposite direction and Greg and I set out to flank the cows out of the field. As I was walking along I was hit with a sharp pain in my gut, right along the belt. One or two rank farts -- farts that seemed to hug my ass for about an eternity -- cured the problem.

Once I was behind the cows, I let them have it. "Alright, you fucking cocksuckers!" I screamed. "Get moving! Get! C'mon you bastards! We ain't got all fucking day!" The beeves skedaddled in fine order, leaving a small corner of the cornfield in complete ruins.

In a couple of minutes, Greg and I were back in my truck with thirty-one angry bovines running ahead of us down the narrow, muddy road. Unlike the gravel roads, which were dusty this time of year, the clay-bottomed field roads were rutted and full of festering pools of mosquito-laced water. The truck topped a small eminence and headed down the other side to reveal Tim waiting patiently at the open gate. As my weight shifted forward in the seat, I suddenly felt like my belt was too tight. I reached down out of instinct and found that my belt was fine -- the sensation was coming from deep inside the unholy abyss of my colon. This time, thoughts of an impending massive shit crossed my mind; but we soon had the beeves back together as one herd, and we drove them in fine old-West fashion toward the homestead.

When we arrived at the corral with my herd, the sun was hot in the sky, with only a few wispy clouds to block its scorching rays. While Greg went to fetch the horn cutter I slipped off to the barn to water a couple of horses and my niece's fair calf, Snickers. And as I walked across the road, my gut started to make gurgling sounds, as if a hell-bound demon had crawled in there and started playing Dixie with a pan flute. Within a few seconds my own fart flute was piping away as well. But I decided to continue on my course -- my horses and Snickers the Calf needed water, and I needed to get the whole shot-giving business started without more delays.

Once inside the barn, I ran a pail of water and carried it into one of the stalls. Just as my stud horse started drinking, I felt my rectum begin to twitch and writhe uncontrollably. I started to sweat. My knuckles were white and I could feel my heartbeat go into overdrive, as if I were on a tour-bus full of senior citizens flying over the edge of a cliff to a fiery death below. My shitting situation was starting to look like a chain-smoking Tyra Banks on a double-cheeseburger-and-funnel-cake binge.

I jerked the bucket away from the horse and ran over to Snickers' stall across the aisle. I dropped my jeans and squatted over her manure trough. I pushed with all my might, expecting a huge mud missile to shoot out of my ass.

Nothing. Nothing but a high-pitched squeaky fart that didn't even smell.

I stood up in disbelief. What had happened?

My rectum was throbbing like a beating heart. The sun shining through the windows seemed to take on a green tint, as if some sort of toxic event was about to begin. My stud horse Buck and his stallmate Lucy had their heads turned and were staring at me. "Great," I thought. "I have an audience."

Suddenly a large atomic gurgle seemed to well up from beneath the earth's crust and pass all the way to the nerve center in my brain.

My instincts told me to squat.

I assumed the position.

It wasn't a mud missile, though -- it was a frothing volcano of putrid ooze. And then, suddenly, it quit. And then another huge gurgle hit me and I was back to work, this time producing the shit equivalent of several small kiwi fruit. The smell reminded me of being cooped up in an old van all night with a bunch of drunks practicing their beer farts. Then a smooth-but-burning half-gallon of chocolate milk poured from my anal abyss and splattered on top of the rotting pile of kiwi shits.

Was it over? The pain was gone.

My next thought was to find an old seed bag to wipe with.

But at that moment, fate decided that it had not yet been cruel enough with me. As I maintained my squat in a moribund stupor, Snickers let out a loud beller. Completely surprised by the juvenile outburst, I lost my balance and fell backwards into the manure trough, now plastered with my recent batch of shit soup.

I stood up, cursing a flowing string of swear words like a preacher caught in a whorehouse, and delivered one final foghorn fart that made me want to puke my guts up like a jock after a Colt 45 binge. The two horses had witnessed the whole thing, but I wasn't concerned. These were simple creatures, only caring if I was going to pull up my pants and resume watering and feeding them.

I hobbled over to the feed bin and took out an empty sack. I brushed it across my shit-covered backside, legs, and shirt. The foul, sticky shit wouldn't cling to the bag, and only smeared around my exposed legs and tucchus more.

"The hell with it," I said. I pulled up my pants, sacrificing all the clothing I had on to the brown destruction, and went about feeding the animals.

When I got back to the corral, Tim and Greg were waiting for me. To them, I had been gone ten minutes to feed the animals. To me, it seemed like I had been gone for hours. I had been a prisoner of my body's primal functions.

But whatever hellish things had occurred, I was finally reunited with my neighbors and feeling like half a human being again. I walked up to the headgate where Greg was standing and set my gloves down. I continued walking toward the house and my wife, to whom I owed an explanation about a ruined almost-new pair of Levis.

Greg called after me. "Jesus Christ -- did you fall in a shit pile or something?"

I didn't answer.