Jenz First NaNo Post.

(In case you don't know what the hell a NaNo is, go to this site: National Novel Writing Month. Here's my profile.)

I wasn’t there the day the longhorns came to life, but I heard about it.

I’m not talking about the Texas Longhorns here, though God knows they could use a little life even if they did manage to beat OU this year. I’m talking about the longhorns in front of City Hall. Fourteen or fifteen of ‘em, sculpted in iron or brass or whatever material they make realistic cow sculptures out of these days. The way they’re positioned, they look like they’re coming down out of a canyon or something and heading to a creek for a drink. One of em even has its head down in the water. I mean, they’re cute as a bug’s ear, or a cow’s ear, or a sow’s ear, or something like that. Tourists come pose in front of ‘em and take pictures. I’ve always been kind of fond of the longhorns. If nothing else they’re a nice distraction from the usual crowd of homeless guys that hang around in front of the fountain and yell charming if incomprehensible things at me when I come in to work about seven a.m.

But, anyway. The longhorns. From the way I heard it, the one with its head in the creek suddenly lifted its muzzle and sniffed the air. Depending on who you ask, this was accompanied by a loud shriek of metal that stopped once the longhorn was upright. It turned its head both ways, gave a kind of cow shrug, and started forward.

A few seconds later, the next longhorn started to quiver. This one was just standing at the head of the fake trail, looking interested, so there wasn’t any shriek of metal. It just started to turn its head to check whatever was happening with its friend there by the creek. After a minute or so it ambled down to the water, stuck its head in, took a drink and followed its friend.

The guy who told me about this – who was, like most of the other witnesses, homeless and a bit crazy – said that it didn’t happen all at once. It was first one statue, then another, and then another. Some of them started to nibble at the grass. Some of them checked the water out. Some of them just moseyed around, as if the whole becoming-animated thing had messed them up and they’d forgotten where it was they were going. One of them even lifted its tail and left a pile of smelly metallic turds next to the fountain. You gotta feel sorry for a cow that’s been sitting on a load that size since the early 1970s.

Anyway, the herd got itself back together into, well, a herd and moseyed over toward City Hall proper. Sorry for saying “moseyed” so many times, but if you’ve ever seen a cow move, you know they don’t walk. They mosey. And this isn’t even arguing about the fact that they’re flesh and blood cows versus large metal cows that have inexplicably discovered how to move. So, moseying along, they found themselves a large patch of grass and began to mow, as cows will do. This went on most of that Sunday until dark when, again according to my crazy homeless eyewitness, the cows sort of hunkered down in the grass and went to sleep.

Yep, it's the sequel to No Accounting For Reality. And I promise it only gets weirder from here.