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Animal farts

I'm new to animal farts. My first two dozen years, I only lived with humans and cats.

Humans, I knew, farted a lot. I don't know if my family is uniquely prolific, but we are uninhibited. My mother would often lay a room-shaker and then blame it on "barking spiders." My brother and I, as kids, perfected methods of collecting and essentially huffing our farts. We hated each other's, but would compare the finer points of our own, which we nosed like fine wine. (We'd even rate them, like alcohol, on a scale of "proof," a method Mike later took to extremes by igniting his farts like gunpowder.) Even my dad, eternal voice of reason among the unruly Welsh, would not hold back, although often his emissions had the tone of a muted trumpet -- a little stifled. My own farts sometimes sound that way. Depends on my stress & caffeine levels.

Yes, I've always known humans farted. Although a friend in grade school, a bit of a science wonk, once laid some knowledge on me to the effect that "the average person farts 18 times a day," and I mis-heard "person" for "Christian." (He was Jewish.) For about a week I pondered how different creeds might fart differently -- did unleavened bread play a role? Or pork? -- until he set me straight.

Anyway. Unlike humans, cats never fart. Maybe when they're very young, still getting all their bacteria and enzymes straightened out, an indiscreet toot might escape. But an adult cat, properly schooled in feline etiquette, will never soil the air. Slobber on your neck, yes. Dig a claw into your nipple, yes. Gnaw your fingers, yes. Use your crotch as a spring board, yes. Vomit globs of hair on your bathroom floor, yes. But no farting.

So nothing in my life had prepared me for my first dog, who I came to terms with last year. Here's this creature many times smaller than me, with a steady diet and a marked aversion to beer, who without fail produces the most offensive odors I have ever smelt.

And I'm no shrinking violet. I once earned my entire fifth grade class a five-minute recess, subsequently extended to 30 minutes, on the strength of a single fart. (Got repaid with scorn, too. Rather than thank me, my peers mocked me to tears. Kids suck.)

Dogs don't just take the odor to another level. They are amazingly perverse about the whole thing. My dogs, in sleep, will lay a fart, then wake up to smell it. At one point during Zuma's puppy-hood, I got sick of always smelling his stench, and started giving him covered wagons and teabag farts. (Yes, I too am amazingly perverse.) He responded with wild-eyed enthusiasm; I think the sick bastard was actually flattered. My other dog, Pepper, loves to stick his snout right in my crack while I'm changing clothes. I feel his cold, wet snout, then hear a little inhalation, followed by a quick "huff!" When I get mad, he just looks at me with his big brown innocent eyes.

Dogs, of course, also love plain old feces. Cat poo? My litterbox was a disaster area until we blocked it off from dog access. Horse poo? Any hike on a horse trail is a teachable moment. Cow poo? Shit, don't get me started. Out at Mount Pisgah there are a couple of pastures where somebody runs dairy cattle on a grazing lease. Cow pies about every ten feet. The way those pies harden in the moist western Oregon autumn climate is about like a lava flow cools: within the thin, hard crust, they flow like a milkshake. My dogs will bite through the crust and I'll come around a corner to catch them standing there, just lapping up the oozing innards. And if dogs could grin, yes, they'd be wearing a shit-eating one. I shout them off one and they just go to the next. Ten minutes later they puke pure cow shit.

I get the feeling that a dog's love of farts and feces is genetic. Either it's part of their scavenging nature, and they seek out poo to glean what nutritional value they can from it; or it helps them track prey: you are what you eat, and dogs are forensic geniuses who can profile a prey's behavior based on its past eating habits. No? Well, then why do you think they like poo? Is it 'cause they can't eat chocolate?

Wow. I'm rambling again. I planned for this post to be about horse farts.

Yeah, so, even my adjustment to dog farts did not prepare me for horse farts.

I've never spent much time with horses. What little time I have spent has been primarily front-end: giving 'em carrots, stroking their noses, hoping they don't bite your fingers. I've ridden a horse as many times as I've ridden an elephant -- once -- and I thought the elephant had a much smoother ride.

But last May FLOGette and I took a little vacation at a "resort" in eastern Oregon, just outside Frenchglen. It featured "modular cabins," better known as "trailers," and apparently had a resident, free-roaming horse.

Very down-home, I know. How rustic and cowboy-ey. Only trouble was, every night when we repaired to the lanai for our sunset cocktails, the damned horse would come begging for carrots. And, as we were the only guests at the time, it would stand next to the lanai whether we gave it carrots or not, and would not leave until we went inside.

And it would fart. I had never seen or heard a horse fart before. What they do is raise their tails, hold real still, and let loose a very long fffffaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh. From the sound you can tell that this is no human or dog fart. You can almost picture the gallons of emission coming forth, as though a natural gas valve had been thrown wide open.

fffffffffffaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh!

This fucking horse had the same atmospheric effect, outdoors on a windblown desert bluff, as my dogs do in small, unventilated rooms: the sensation of suffocation. Have you ever been driven indoors by a fart? No? Has a fart ever made you close the window? No? Then you've never met the business end of a horse.

Posted by FLOG at December 5, 2004 1:45 AM