Of course my bird had a heart attack

The whole reason I went up to Boston was that I thought I was going to have a chance to ride a small cow into a canyon. In fact, I was promised my choice of a whole pen full of beautiful, soft, furry small cows that you could ride without a saddle down into the bottom of a beautiful scenic canyon just outside the city proper. I never would have gotten on the bus if it wasn't for those cows.

It was a long bus ride. I sat next to a man with a big bloody patch of gauze on his forehead. Halfway through the ride he pushed past me (he had the window seat) and stood in the aisle and poured a big bag of change onto the floor. Everyone jumped out of their seats and scrounged for the coins, including the driver. We drifted off the highway and ended up in a ditch somewhere in Connecticut. Luckily we'd killed a bicyclist and I took his bike and rode it the rest of the way while everyone else waited for a replacement bus and tried to steal the change in each others' pockets.

I got at the ranch a few hours late. I talked to the rancher and told him I was there to ride one of his beautiful cows down into the beautiful canyon, but he told me I had come too late -- the cows couldn't ride this late at night, or else they'd get frightened. We were standing next to the pen and the cows seemed fine -- they were beautiful and small, exactly how I'd pictured them, with short brown hair the color of wet sand and covered with little pale markings. I told him the cows looked fine and that I had come here to ride one and that I wouldn't leave until I had the chance, but he told me I was out of luck with regards to the small cows, but that I could still ride a large bird into the canyon.

The bird wasn't really all that large. It was ostrich-sized, I would say. I was very disappointed I wouldn't be riding one of the small cows, but I got on the bird regardless -- I had come all this way, I wasn't about to ride nothing into the canyon.

There were a few of us there, and I noticed I was the only one riding a large bird instead of a small cow. I guess everyone else got there before me. The rancher told us that the most important thing, throughout the ride, was that we check the cow's heart rate, to make sure it wasn't becoming exhausted. He didn't say anything about checking the large bird's pulse, but I did anyway. I could feel its heart beating fast under its feathers. I didn't know if this was a resting heart rate, or if it was already tired just from standing there with me on my back. But anyway I didn't have time to figure it out (not that I would have known how anyway) because it was time to head down into the canyon.

My large bird followed all the small cows. The cows were faster than my bird, which only had the two arms with its two useless wings. I shouted at everyone in front of me to slow down so me and my large bird could catch up, but they lost us pretty quickly. Just a few hundred yards into the canyon and my bird started coughing and wheezing. I felt for its pulse under its feathers. Its heart felt like it was just about to burst. But I didn't care, I wanted to get to the bottom of the canyon, so I kicked it, and of course my bird had a heart attack, it was just my luck. I almost fell down as it died under me. It just about stopped breathing and I was so mad I picked the large bird up by its long neck and heaved it down into the canyon. It hit the rocks several times on the way down. I thought, good, serves that fucking bird right.

Anyway, once I chucked the bird into the canyon, everything outside was deadly still. I saw a couple of those downtown skyscrapers way off in the distance, and some brownstones closer to where I was. I looked down into the canyon and it was way dark, way too dark to see, it looked like it just ended, I couldn't even see the bottom. And then I looked back up, to see if I should climb, and how far it would be, but the canyon walls were steep, and I didn't see any easy paths -- I couldn't even see how the bird and all those small cows had gotten down. So I kind of huddled up and pulled my coat around me and figured I would be able to sort it out in the morning. It was a few hours before I was able to fall asleep, and all I could hear were the cows up there on the ranch, lowing like they couldn't stand the quiet, like they were carrying on some cow conversation, like they weren't just some dumb fucking cows they didn't let me ride.