I can’t decide if this one is more Pit or MPSIMS, so I apologize if I put it in the wrong place. Since it entails a shitload of money, aggravation, and livestock I figure the pit was the place.
When we moved into this house in '02, it came with a pool. Concerned about the safety of the children I spent a lot of money and effort buying the best pool cover in the industry.
This pool cover is so strong you can walk elephants across it. Elephants!! Being a sucker for hyperbolous advertising, I ordered one and spent a whole weekend installing it and the pain in the ass anchors you have to sink into the concrete.
When it was done I had one of these:
http://www.poolcenter.com/looploc.htm
Scroll down to the picture of the elephant walking across.
I didn’t have an elephant, but I tested it by walking across. Every year it takes forever to stretch this thing in place, but it’s worth it. You know, because it’s elephant proof. I was going to remove it and start the pool up this weekend. This afternoon though, my wife calls me at work.
“Hi honey. There’s a cow in the pool. You better come home.”
“That’s impossible,” I say. “The pool cover is elephant proof. There’s no way a cow could possibly break through. What do you mean there’s a cow in the pool?”
“Elephant and cow proof aren’t the same thing, dear. There is a cow in the pool. You should probably come home and deal with it.”
Well, tonight is my tennis night and I didn’t feel like dealing with a fucking cow in the fucking pool, but home I go, and sure enough there’s a motherfucking cow in the motherfucking pool.
Immediately, I understand the problem. Cows have sharp hooves. Elephants have flat feet. This cow apparently broke out from the farm next door, jumped two four foot wooden fences, walked out onto the elephant proof pool cover, puncturing it with its sharp hooves. It is cradled in the mesh with three of its legs punched through and the fourth splayed behind it. Periodically, it struggles.
Fucking cow. Fuck me. I live in Pennsylvania and am surrounded by cows and I spent $1,200 on an elephant proof cover. If I lived in India, I would be genius.
So, I walk down to the farm and tell the farmers that their cow has busted into my pool. The man and his two sons come up to view the cow (as if I was lying,) and the man sends his son down to get his tractor and some rope and chains.
The man’s nice, and tells me he’ll pay for the damage. I tell him I can’t beleive it happened because this is an elephant proof cover. The man doesn’t say anything, but I can tell that he thinks I’m a moron for buying an elephant proof cover when what I needed was a cow proof cover.
They have to remove two sections of fence to get their tractor in. The man goes out on the elephant proof cover and spends ten minutes trying to get his rope underneath the body of the cow so they can pull it out. Finally, he gets it behind the udders and around one of the free legs.
The boy fires up the tractor and tries to pull the cow out. He’s pulling uphill though, and the tractor is mostly just tearing up grass and ruining the lawn. He tries this from various angles so as to tear up the maximum amount of turf, but makes no headway in the cow extraction.
He makes a running start of it, and the cow starts to come loose. It’s dragging and ripping the elephant proof cover. The cow struggles, halfway gets up and then punches through the cover again. The kid keeps going because he’s making headway and the cow flips sideways (still with several legs through the cover.) The cover gets twisted around the cow, and turned inside out.
The cow is now upside down with it’s legs sticking out up through the cover. The front half of the cow, including the head is now under the cover, underwater.
My whole family is standing in the back deck watching this. My six year old looks at me and says “I don’t think the cow is going to be able to breathe like that.”
The cow is upset, as you can understand, and rightly so, being upside down and underwater.
The man jumps into the pool with his other son (the pool has to be like 50 degrees.) Struggling heroically he manages to get the cows face and muzzle above water. Basically, he is holding up the front half of the cow to do so, and the strain is showing.
Now, I consider myself a man of action. Able-bodied, a dooer of deeds, etcetera, etcetera, but when the man, in obvious strain, looked at me and called for me to come help him, I was paralyzed.
I pointed at myself and did a “Who? Me?” kind of gesture, as the man and son continued to struggle to right the capsized cow, which has now been under water so long it probably has the bends.
I kind of hemmed and hawed and looked useless and innectual. There was just no way I was going to go down there and deal with them and their cow.
The partial drowning weakened the cow in its struggles and they were able to get it back upright and disentangled. To make a long story short they then pushed and pulled the cow sliding up, and out and over the elephant proof cover and back onto land. I have a ruined law, a ruined cover, a ruined fence,and cow shit in the pool.
