I'd heard the expression thousands of times and imagined its unfortunate implications, but I am one of the few people to have actually experienced it.
It was a lovely sun-drenched summer's day, and I had just finished cleaning the stalls of Cliff and Clarice, our beloved bovines, and that of a guest nag we were tending while the McBrides were at a chicken-plucking convention in Dayton, Ohio. I had gathered a small pail of the combined bovine and equine droppings that I was intending to spread on the rutabagas and Savoy cabbage patch to aid in their growth, hoping for prizes in the Chezlee, Ont., Parsnips and Arts Fest Produce Contest.
Unbeknownst to me, Lucetta, eager for notice, if not first place, in the Original Art division of the same aforementioned Fest, had hand-painted an old sheet, tattered and limp with age, and was drying its fresh and sticky surface with a gi-normous fan that she'd borrowed from the abattoir. To set the scene, perhaps a picture will help, although I hasten to point out that painting was not Lucetta's forte.
