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Silver Creek MN | It all started innocently enough. I had sat by and watched this whole Coronavirus debacle unfold before my very eyes. I had listened to Doctor Faucet and Doctor Bricks and a hundred other medical experts go on and on about this horrible contagious disease. I had come to the conclusion that the only thing that was really contagious was fear. Like many Americans, I would not take the Covid19 bug seriously until it directly affected me. I was driving down the County Road on this warm August afternoon and was approaching the local Lutheran country church. I was expecting to see one of their witty sayings on the big signboard, like “there's a highway to hell and only a stairway to heaven”. But instead the signboard read “Pork Chop Fundraiser cancelled due to Covid”. I slammed on the brakes and pulled over to the shoulder of the road. How could this be? You can make me wear a mask, you can make me stand six feet away from folks, but Dadgummit, when you mess with a man’s grilled pork chops, you’ve gone too far!
It was at that moment that I decided to create a Covid19 vaccine. Some would scoff at an uneducated, retired, small time farmer coming up with a vaccine, but most people tend to overthink things. In my opinion, I was qualified for this undertaking. My thirty plus years of experience making homemade wine has given me the ability to concoct potent potables that make people feel better. The fact that I had watched every episode of “Breaking Bad” proves I have a knowledge of chemistry. And the fact that I had not called the vet to our farm in over six years says a lot for my ability to diagnose and treat illnesses. I might even be a bit overqualified. Sure, some of those animals in our three chest freezers that I had butchered may have lived if I had called the vet, but this is no time to split hairs. After all, President Trumps reelection hopes may hinge on my delivery of a vaccine by Election Day!
There was a ton of work to do to get my “farmaceutical” business going. I would need to do some research on vaccine creation. I would need a lab to work in. I would need a really long and hard to pronounce name for the vaccine, which would allow me to charge a lot for it. And of course I would need to test it on living creatures.
The milk house attached to my old dairy barn was an obvious choice for a lab. It had running water, a heater, a cement floor with a drain and barn kitties to keep the rodents to a minimum. The bulk tank and milk pipeline would be perfect for mixing my concoction and funneling it into quart canning jars for distribution. I had a little leftover stimulus money to use on a new coat of paint to cover the fly poop on the walls. It would probably be as fine a facility as you would find at Pfizer or anywhere else.
Believe it or not, this would be my third project related to the Chinese Flu Pandemic. My first was the “Social Distancing Stick”. I took an old broom handle and duct taped a wooden clothespin to one end. When I went to the store to buy something, I would clamp down cash or a check in the clothespin and extend the stick towards the cashier, who would take the payment and clamp a receipt into the clothespin. Transaction completed while staying six feet apart! If someone insisted on shaking hands, I would put an old chore glove over the clothespin. The second was the “Corn Bundle”. I used short lengths of sisal twine to bundle up old dry corn cobs to be used in the absence of toilet paper. Naturally each pack contained two red cobs and a white cob. You start with a red cob and then use the white cob to see if you need the second red cob.
As luck would have it, I was due for my annual physical at the local clinic. I was fortunate enough to be seen by Doctor Andy Burgdorfer, who was regarded as the finest lefthanded, redheaded, bipolar physician in the two county area. Even better yet, I caught Andy on one of his good days. So when I asked about the finer details of vaccine development, Andy went on at length. Of special interest to me was the use of eggs to create vaccines. Having a flock of layer hens at home meant I would save big bucks on material. I wondered if the double yolk eggs would provide extra strength to the vaccine. When Doctor Andy asked me if I had a good stream when I piss, it reminded me that I had left the hose running while filling the stock tank that morning. I bid the good doctor farewell and rushed home.
That night I unwound by watching an episode of that wildly popular TV show called Northern Exposure. You know, the one where the young Jewish doctor from New York City is basically an indentured servant of the remote village of Cicely, Alaska. In this particular episode, the residents of Cicely are suffering from the nasty Russian Flu. Doctor Fleischman is inundated with patients and has no remedy for this strain of influenza. Then his festively plump Eskimo assistant Marilyn brings him a pail of foul smelling slurry that she rubs on the patients. It turns out to be a miracle cure. When Doctor Fleischman asks Marilyn what is in the bucket, she coyly replies “You don’t want to know.” I was fairly certain it was moose poop.
This got me to thinking about something I had read about manure poultices. A poultice is a soft, moist mass of material, typically of plant material or flour, applied to the body to relieve soreness and inflammation and kept in place with a cloth. I had once taken a wrong turn while navigating the Internet and ran into this passage from an 1894 medical journal: “In stone bruises, in children, where the swelling is painful and tense, and the little sufferer lies awake and cries half the night, a beneficial local application is assured by the country people of this vicinity to be a large, fat and unctuous poultice of cow’s dung; it should be gathered soon after it is passed, and the whole foot wrapped in the soothing mass. It is said to ripen the swelling in a few hours, immediately soothe the pain, and so soften the skin that it is easily removed.”
I also read that cow dung, has been used medicinally in India for centuries. A mixture of cow dung and cow urine is believed to cure diabetes, cancer, and arthritis. Who woulda thunk that the answer to so many of our problems lies right in front of us (and on our boots)? So I then worked through the definition of a vaccine: “a substance used to stimulate the production of antibodies and provide immunity against one or several diseases, prepared from the causative agent of a disease, its products, or a synthetic substitute, treated to act as an antigen without inducing the disease”. I fell asleep in the middle of that sentence, but I got the gist of it. If a manure poultice could cure so many illnesses, why not introduce manure into the system so the cure is already resident in the body when you get the disease? I was amazed at my stunning progress in developing a vaccine. In just a few short days I had almost the whole thing figured out! I was ready to begin the production stage.
I remembered Doc Barfnecht, the local vet, advising me to use a “broad spectrum” wormer. “Catch as many of the little buggars as you can”, he had said. Following that line of thinking, I decided to use as many kinds of manure as I had readily available. Years ago, I had been told that we must “celebrate diversity”. I took that to mean I should have lots of different animals on the farm. So I had accumulated some cattle, pigs, chickens, turkeys and a few sheep. But no horses!! I figured that mixture should give me the broad spectrum control needed to combat even the most mutating of viruses. Now, how to capture the fresh poop and pee so it could be converted into medicine?
I had some old rain gutter material lying around that I set up behind the livestock when they were fed at a fenceline feeder. I had the gutter at a bit of a downhill angle so the poop would slide down inro a five gallon pail that I could haul to the milkhouse. This “Poop Chute” worked good enough to get me started. I set up some of my wifes old cake pans under the spots where the chickens and turkeys would roost. And made a mental note to not return them to the kitchen.
Once I accumulated enough manure and piss to make a small batch of vaccine I mixed it up in the bulk tank using an old canoe paddle. The key would be to get it runny enough that it would go through a needle. Pieces of straw were my biggest problem, along with dead flies. I would need to get a funnel with a screen.
Naming my creation would be key to its success. The scientific name would have to describe what was in the drug but be impossible for most folks to pronounce. Then the short name would be somethings folks would remember when they went to the pharmacy. For the scientific name I came up with Crittercrapinpissypoop. Definitely described the origin of the product, and way too many syllables for anyone other than an English professor to pronounce. The short name would be “Manurex”. Sweet and simple. Of course I would have to have a name for my company that would sound modern and promote the high level of technology I was using. I would call my operation “Excrementech”.
Now came the tricky part of the process – testing. My first impulse was to put our 27 barn cats to use as test subjects. Half would get the real deal and half would get a placebo of expired iron medicine for baby pigs.
Unfortunately, my wife caught wind of this plan and put the kaibash on it, saying something cat-astrophic could happen to my farmaceutical venture. So I needed to come up with a creature that nobody really cares about. The answer was embarrassingly obvious – possums! I borrowed every live trap in the Township and used limburger cheese as bait. In three days I had enough possum to prove to the FDA that my drug was safe for humans. And to have a big BBQ dinner if things went awry.
I gathered up all the hypos and dull needles I could find and started injecting the vaccine into the possums. Let me tell you that any old type of PPE (Possum Protective Equipment) will not work when handling possums. Welders gloves, clothing and masks is the only way to go. Being relatively certain that my vaccine testing would be successful, I made sure all the possum cages were securely closed and went to the house to work on ways to promote my product.
Marketing the product would require a snappy little jingle for the radio stations. I would have the Olson sisters from down the road record the following: “If you’re feeling crappy, from the Flu; Trust your health to the power of Poo” – “Manuuuurex”. The jingle would play on local radio station KOWZ during their morning and evening “Milkin’ Music” shows. It was sure to be more popular than even the Geritol commercials. Then I would set up a series of wooden signs along the County road, just like they did in the old Burma Shave days. The signs would read, in order, “The Chinese Flu”, “Is hard to endure”, Your only hope”, “Lies in Manure”, “Trust Manurex”.
I fell asleep and dreamt of how life would be as a rich owner of a farmaceutical company. I would flaunt my wealth by doing outlandish things like buying my groceries at a convenience store, filling up on gas at a full service station, even paying both halves of my semi-annual property tax at once! I might even buy some farm equipment that was less than fifty years old! Maybe a tractor with a three point hitch!
The next morning just happened to be Halloween. I rose from bed and hurried out to the milkhouse to see how my test patients were doing. It appeared that they were all in a deep slumber, content as could be. When I tried to wake them, they just kept on snoozing. I poked them with a stick, but no response. Now I was aware of this habit possums have of pretending to be dead, so I waited. And waited. And waited some more. What could have gone awry with my testing? There was a clock ticking with the delivery of a vaccine before Election Day. Finally, I gave up the ghost and did the unthinkable – I called the vet and asked him to make a barn call.
Doctor Ralph Barfnecht believed in hedging his bets. So he operated a butcher shop in addition to be a veterinarian. He had the ability to turn a sick flock of poultry into “Winner, winner, chicken dinner”. Doctor Ralph showed up in his Halloween costume, dressed up as the Mad Scientist. He took one step into the milkhouse lab and stopped in his tracks. He pinched his nose shut and said in a low, somewhat unapproving voice, “Great ghost of Frankenstein – what are you up to here?!”. Doctor Ralph then stormed back to his pickup and angrily punched the buttons on his cell phone. Even with the windows of the pickup cab shut, I could hear every word of his conversation with the Sheriffs Department.
I could not help but feel that I had let down the President and the entire world with my failed attempt at developing a vaccine for the Chinese Flu. I guess some things should not be rushed along. Now I had plenty of time to contemplate the errors of my ways, staring at the big “Quarantine” sign alongside the driveway. I had tried to help humanity but failed. In the final analysis, maybe it’s time for me to realize that I’m just getting too old for this sh*t.
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A Really Scary Story for Halloween
