Papa often said the most beautiful sounds in the world were cattle lowing at eventide, a breeze whispering in the cottonwoods and coyotes in mournful concert on yonder knolls.

But more than all else, Papa loved his cows, work horses, saddle horses and pigs in descending order. And he loved the land, especially in springtime when the first shoots of wheat, barley and corn poked through the rich chocolate loam earth.

Indeed, the cows got us through the Great Depression: meat from a butchered beef, the weekly cream check and the pittance we collected from whole milk we sold in town, and little did these customers know it had been stirred in the pail by unwashed and swishing tails.

Papa, gone these many years – to the “great meadow in the sky,” as Father Warner proclaimed at his funeral – would be sorely disturbed by the Environmental Protection Agency which claims cows are responsible for 15 percent and more of the methane emission fouling today's atmosphere.

And because Papa is not here to defend cows, I feel obligated to do so, and to the best of recollection, cannot remember any appreciable incidence of farting in our herd.

And having been reared on a cattle ranch in far away Montana, I consider myself somewhat of an authority on the day-to-day habits of cows: I milked them, herded them, fed them, hobbled and neck-yoked them, roped and branded them and led them behind a farm wagon to the neighbor's corral to be bred, and in late autumn rounded up steers and old milk cows no-longer-paying for their keep, for the cattle drive to the Kremlin, MT stockyard for shipment to Omaha, St. Paul and Chicago.

I've been splattered by their pies, switched by their tails, gored by their horns and chased across pastures by enraged bulls. But I cannot remember their having a farting problem and creating objectionable methane as except perhaps during bitter winters when the oats and barley and corn ran out and we had to feed them rotted straw and Russian thistles.

Actually, Papa probably passed more gas than the entire herd, and I wonder if he were still alive the Environmental Protection Agency wouldn't put a ban on him.

Probably, the truth be exposed, if cows passed as much gas as the bureaucrats claim – and believe me, they ought to know because it takes one to smell one – it is because cows are no longer treated with respect. I mean instead of oats and barley and corn they are fed such things as powdered turkey feet, soy, rotten tomatoes and I don't know what all. No wonder they suffer gas pains and PMS (Pre-Milking Stress). Likewise, I would not be at all surprised to learn they are afflicted with agonizing hemorrhoids.

Secondly, each of our cows had a name and a stall and could wander the meadows at will. Instead, they must escape fouled and rotten-smelling corral water by standing on manure piles! And imagine the humiliation when an artificial inseminator comes out from town with a cold needle and deprives them of a barnyard romance with a magnificent snorting bull!

(Comments to the writer: vallefox@accessbee.com)