November 15 - Operation Moo Juice

Of all the so called "Frankenstein Foods" out there, none sparked more controversy than Patty the Veggie Cow.
Conceived by biogeneticist Dr. Ronald McDonald, Patty was a beef cow made entirely of vegetables.
And she was alive. Alive!
Or so his colleagues would have joked, implying as they always did that Dr. McDonald was a mad doctor. But he wasn't mad. Maybe a little angry sometimes, but not straight up mad. A couple of his colleagues even referred to him as a testy doctor, but it sounded too much like testes doctor. Because of this, one of them stopped, and the other one did it more.
Yes, yes, but was he crazy?
No.
Unconventional, irrational, unorthodox, antisocial, unbalanced, and way, way, way off center?
Yes.
But not crazy.
For if he had been crazy, he wouldn't have been able to produce Patty.
And yet produce her he did--to spite his wife Glenda, a devout and often very preachy vegetarian.
Dr. McDonald was always making arguments against vegetarianism and in favor of omnivorism, but his wife ignored them all.
"Find me a cow that's made of vegetables," she would tell him. "And I'll eat that. Until then, thanks but no thanks."
Thanks, but no thanks.
Her attitude was frustrating for Dr. McDonald. He loved beef. The fact that his name was Ronald McDonald--and he was a red head, no less--didn't make things any easier. Every night he would grill up a steak or burger to perfection. But the sight of his wife happily chomping away at a healthy mixed green salad always tainted his meal, if only a little.
And so one night, after losing yet another battle to the Famous Grouse, he came up with the plan to get back at his wife by bioengineering a veggie cow.
"I'll show her," he said out loud, causing him to feel a little self consciously like a mad doctor. But not enough to stop him from following through on his plan.
In fact, he decided his plan was so good that it wouldn't wait until the morning. He grabbed a second bottle of the Grouse, went to his basement lab, and worked and drank his way through the night.
And the rest of the weekend.
And the next several weekends.
As unconventional, irrational, unorthodox, antisocial, unbalanced, and way, way, way off center doctors are wont to do, Dr. McDonald went overboard on this project.
But after two months of solid, if not obsessive work, he had produced Patty, the world's first veggie cow.
She had tomato eyes, a pumpkin udder, and massive zucchini horns. The rest of her was an enormous assemblage of broccoli, cucumbers, turnips, eggplants, spinach, carrots, and every other vegetable Dr. McDonald could get his hands on.
But Patty wasn't just a bunch of vegetables that were stuck together so they looked like a cow.
No.
Patty was alive.
She walked, breathed, mooed, ate grass, pooped (compost) and did everything else a regular cow did. The only difference was she was 100% vegetable.
After Glenda recovered from the shock of meeting Patty, she knew she was in a pickle. After all, she had told her husband she would eat a veggie cow if he ever found one. And now here was Patty.
What could she do?
She had to admit that Patty was a miracle--but also an abomination. Not that Glenda was religious in any way. But still, the best way she could articulate her misgivings about its--her--existence was that it was pretty messed up.
And when Glenda asked her husband how it was possible that Patty was actually alive, the only answer he gave her was, "Science."
Ultimately, Glenda decided she would eat her words, but not Patty. She was too scientifically important to just eat. Glenda apologized profusely to her husband for welshing, and he accepted.
And together they took care of Patty, who was calm and pleasant, though a bit melancholy. After a few weeks, in an effort to improve her morale, Dr. McDonald bioengineered a veggie bull and named him Durham.
And then Durham and Patty did what any healthy set of veggie bovines would do.
They mated.
And a few months later, Patty gave birth to a veggie calf they named Cassandra.
And over the next several years, Dr. McDonald continued to bioengineer and breed veggie cattle at an incredibly prolific rate. Perhaps the veggie cow was the key to combating famine. The veggie cow breeding project charged ahead.
Soon Dr. McDonald and his wife had to move to a farm where they would have enough land to take care of their herd.
When they went public with their creation, vegetarians around the world were at an ethical crossroads: Was it OK to eat a veggie cow?
Most of them steered clear. Yes, they were vegetables, but they were conscious, sentient. It just seemed wrong, especially when you factored in the fact that biogenetics were involved.
Plus, they looked really weird.
Thanks, but no thanks.
All the Hindus in India stayed away, too.
And the world's meat eaters weren't interested at all.
And so before long, having no natural predators and breeding like crazy, the veggie cows became overpopulated. All they did was eat grass, produce compost, and make little veggie cows. All of which created a huge strain on the nation's agricultural resources. It quickly became an ecological crisis. Something had to be done.
In the end, it was decided that the veggie cows would be juiced--literally. The veggie cows would be converted to vegetable juice.
There was a massive outcry.
There were protests at every turn.
And it went ahead anyway.
In the largest civil works project undertaken since the Great Depression, massive juicers were built and distributed throughout the Midwest and the veggie cows were fed into them one by one.
Even though nobody wanted the juice, it seemed like such a waste to just toss it out, so it was flash frozen and put in gigantic storage containers "just in case."
Operation Moo Juice, as it was called, was a success.
In time, Dr. McDonald and his wife went back to their regular house, and Dr. McDonald went back to his old job.
And in a conciliatory gesture toward her husband, Glenda began joining her husband for an occasional hamburger.