Inlay

The wife brought home our new pet. What is that? I asked. A Chihuahua cow, she said. Or as the exotic pet breeder lady called it, a Cowhuahua. I didn’t know that was possible, I said. I mean, logistically, how can that happen? Then a rather disturbing memory from my childhood on a distant uncle’s farm poked at me: it was AI of a different kind. Artificial insemination. I was considering the Shih Tzu Cow but remembered your allergies, all that hair, the grooming, she said, while stroking our new but unnamed Cowhuahua. It was the size of a regular Chihuahua, with pinkish paw pads instead of hooves, a face like a cow, and a smooth, udderless undercarriage. It prefers to bark rather than moo, but it can do both,” she said with confidence. When I asked how many stomachs it had, she said two, which seemed like a reasonable compromise, but it didn’t stop us from gawking at its belly wondering where there was room for a second stomach on such a tiny frame. This thing is absolutely ridiculous, I bemoaned, and kept bemoaning, seeing that look in her eye and knowing this milk-free animal wasn’t going back to the exotic pet breeder lady. It is a living, breathing metaphor of us, she said with the flatness of an accountant. I couldn’t validate this truth out loud, not to her face or the cow-face of the handheld pet. But I knew which one of us was cautiously curious, which one had the ferocious bark with no bite. --- Thad DeVassie is a writer and artist/painter from Ohio. He is the author of three chapbooks and was awarded the James Tate Poetry Prize in 2020 from SurVision Books. Find more of his written and painted work at www.thaddevassie.com