That’s what I’m having for dinner tonight. These are the pros of getting hitched to an Ecuadorian girl. Worlds collide: while we watch David Spade in some silly ass TV sitcom, my future in-laws bring over a steaming bowl of cow’s foot soup. Cow’s hoof soup, to be precise. That cow’s hooves are somehow edible has always been surprising to me. Here’s the best way I can describe them: they’re a prehistoric form of jello. Yet, in an unexpected development, they’ve become one of my favorite things to eat. I’m fully in favor of eating any unlikely part of an animal, even though I won’t eat most of them myself (the ever spiritual ‘use of the entire animal’ and all of that) . Some Mexicans eat eyeball tacos. What’s unsettling about eating an eyeball for me is that I make the completely illogical leap that I might well be eating a human eyeball. I mean, if you didn’t tell me otherwise, how would I know I wasn’t? I guess you could say the same thing about steak (wasn’t this the premise of a Hitchcock movie?). But you certainly can’t say the same thing about a hoof. Therefore, I won’t go near any non-meat animal part with a fork except for hooves.
(A quick Google search with the terms “cow foot soup, health benefits” reveals that pig’s foot soup—not what I asked for, but…okay I’m listening—is healthy “because the gelatin that slowly cooks out of the feet and into the broth is believed to prevent deterioration of the knee ligaments”). There you go.
But none of that is important. What is important is that the cow’s foot soup got me thinking of an unsolved mystery that surfaced a few years ago. A zoological phenomenon concerning cows was explained to me by a guide in Ecuador, and I still don’t know whether to believe it. Here’s a journal entry from August, 2005 to get you up to speed:
A man with four horses arrived, we mounted them, and we headed into the hills. That horse ride was one of the more remarkable experiences I’ve had. We climbed a path until we reached the summit of a mountain that overlooked a cloud forest, some of the most beautiful Andean country there is. Our guide was a native of the area and showed us a variety of medicinal plants that his ancestors had been using for centuries. At one point we dismounted and walked through the forest to a small waterfall, noting rare tree species along the way. I left the path for a moment to do a little business behind a tree, and while I was back there I noticed a number of large animal droppings that strongly resembled cow patties.
“What are those droppings?” I asked the guide when I returned.
“Which droppings?”
I described what I’d seen.
“Those are wild cow droppings,” he said.
I’m famous for being gullible and I’m also a gringo tourist, so it’s entirely possible that what the guide proceeded to explain is false. In fact, it’s likely that he’s full of manure, but I have to give him credit for explaining the entire thing with the soberest of expressions. If he was pulling one over on me, it was the best performance I’ve seen, and he persisted in the face of my refusal to believe it. I’ve been made the ass of a joke so many times in my life that I hardly believe anything anymore.
For example: There’s a sculpture on the Lower East Side (the capital letters here are highly important to New Yorkers) of New York that is basically an enormous, iron cube balanced on one of its corners. A friend of mine told me one night, shortly after I’d moved there, that it swivels, that you can move it if you push on it hard enough.
“Go ahead and give it a try,” he said. No way was I going to push that thing until my face turned red while he and his friends doubled over in the background. But you know what? It really does move.
It is in light of the phenomenon of the iron cube somewhere near the Bowery in New York (check it out for yourself) that I’ll bother relaying the guide’s explanation for the cow patties I encountered in a cloud forest in the Andean highlands of Ecuador: They belong to Jungle Cows. That’s right, Jungle Cows. Gary Larson, get your pen. It follows the same concept of how Mustangs came to exist—that domesticated animals escaped captivity, survived in the wilderness long enough to reproduce, and over a generation or two or three, became wild again. According to the guide, Wild Jungle Cows are dangerous animals. He related stories of locals being treed by them. I can’t imagine how a cow could ever be dangerous, wild or not—what would they do, chew you to death? Keep laughing; apparently they have horns and will charge you, gore you, and trample you like a Pamplona bull. Go ahead and try to run. Forget it, you can’t outrun them, just like you can’t outrun Grizzlies and Elephants (I’ve never wanted to believe this). Here is the punch line that keeps me from truly believing (though I’m fascinated how anyone could say such a ludicrous thing with a straight face. Jerry Seinfeld could never quite do it): the cows, after chasing some poor guy up a tree, will sit down at the base of the tree and wait until he comes down, even if it takes a day or two.
“That’s it, enough. Enough!” I said.
“It’s true. It happens,” said the guide.
It deserves research, just in case, but I’d never tell the guy I was trying to verify it. For the sake of argument, I was the only one of the four of us gringos who didn’t believe him. I kept checking the faces of the others for signs of laughter, but they all bought it, which makes way for another possibility: while I was behind the tree doing my business the guide got them together in a huddle and explained the joke. Lorenzo, if you’re out there, it’s been long enough, I found you out, come clean.
Back to the present. Every time I’m hanging out with certain of my friends and I say anything with dubious credibility they now say, “Oh, I guess it’s like the Jungle Cows.” Screw you guys. You know what? I’ve decided to do the research I said I would back in 2005. Tomorrow, I’m going to get an international calling card and I’m going to find someone from the Quilotoa region of Ecuador (where that cloud forest was) and I’m going to call them up and verify this once and for all. But I’m not going to stop there. I’m also going to find a zoologist at Columbia University or some such esteemed institution and get his/her opinion on the matter. After I’ve been vindicated and ‘probable’ existence of Jungle Cows has been confirmed, I’m going to contact the people who are making the “Planet Earth” series over at the Discovery channel and see if they’d be interested in getting some footage. Stay tuned.
