Chaos in the Pasture: A Travel Disaster
by Raymond Duncan
What the heck started this chaotic stampede? AI-generated image
Writer’s note:
I’m workshopping a new series of short stories that track the mishaps of a travel writer. Each story, including the one below, is a work in progress. I’m honing the character and exploring different facets of his life and journey. I appreciate your comments and feedback. -Raymond
3:37 AM in the village of Las Caldas, Spain.
Mort Fleabottom awoke with intense stomach pain, his gurgling belly so bloated he could not see his toes!
In a flash he remembered. Last night’s celebration. The local tavern where he’d slugged down glass after glass of sidra. Followed by chunks of sausage balls buried in a tin of lard.
He lurched from bed on the verge of redefining “bathroom break.”
Not wanting to wake his friend Adolfo’s aunt and uncle, snoring up a storm in the next bedroom, he stealthily eased down the staircase and headed for the bathroom.
Omig, the toilet!
Its white flush tank, positioned high up on the wall, operated by a dangling metal chain. When a seated occupant pulled the chain, water rushed down like Niagara Falls to flush the toilet.
Loud enough to wake Adolfo’s aunt and uncle.
Gotta go somewhere else. He needed to step out the door and get to the nearby pasture where the cows hang out.
Minutes later, he located what appeared to be the perfect tree log in the open field under a full moon.
Not particularly comfortable—Jesus, it’s like sitting on a bed of thumbtacks. Still, it'll get the job done.
Mort mentally noted how this authentic Spanish pastoral scene would make terrific material for his latest travel article (omitting certain biological details).
As a professional travel writer, he could transform even the most undignified moments into publishable material.
Lowering himself on the log, Mort noticed the longhorn cows grazing nearby.
They seem blissfully calm. No doubt used to nighttime sounds. Including any I make.
With that comforting thought, he unlocked his personal floodgates.
Which produced an astounding BLAAAAAAT! So powerful it lifted Mort upward with the force of a rocket launch.
At first the cows simply snorted and glared at Mort.
Then, as if a starter’s gun had fired, they were off!
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Stampede! A thunder of pounding hooves shook the ground! Grunting and wild bellowing reverberated across the field.
Mort later would recall how he sat there on the log, bug-eyed and stupefied amidst the turmoil.
Then it hit him. Holy shit! They’re heading straight for Las Caldas! They’ll wake up the whole damn village!
He attempted to stand. This proved to be his second catastrophic decision of the evening. The first? Drinking a gallon of sidra followed by a sausage juggernaut.
His red and white boxer shorts, bunched around his ankles, transformed him into a hobbled flamingo.
He managed exactly two lurching hops before gravity abandoned him. Whereupon he plunged face-first into a patch of Spanish thistle.
From his new vantage point—cheek pressed into the dirt, rear end moonlit and exposed—Mort watched the herd race directly toward Las Caldas.
Perhaps just as well. His original intention was to run alongside the stampeding cows and try somehow to negotiate with them.
Las Caldas lay perhaps two hundred yards distant, its whitewashed houses sleeping peacefully under terracotta roofs.
The lead cow, a massive beast with horns like twin coat racks, led the charge down the sloping pasture with the determination of a general storming a fortress.
Mort could only watch in horror as the herd poured into the village like an attacking army.
Hooves churned through the muddy main street, knocking over flowerpots and trash cans. He could hear a couple of dog barks, followed by what sounded like every dog in northern Spain.
The cattle exited at the far end of Las Caldas, perhaps ninety seconds later, and disappeared into the darkness beyond. Silence descended slowly, reluctantly, like a curtain with stage fright.
Mort waited a good ten minutes—boxer shorts now restored to their proper position, thistle needles still embedded in his cheeks—before beginning his cautious walk back to the village.
He crept down the main street, wincing at every squelch his Skechers made in hoofprints the size of dinner plates.
Treading carefully through the aftermath—and making mental notes that this incident would definitely not appear in his “Hidden Gems of Northern Spain” article—Mort approached the house he’d left not long ago.
The home of his friend’s aunt and uncle by now appeared mercifully dark. Mort eased the door open with the delicacy of a safecracker, removed his mud-caked shoes, and tiptoed through the narrow hallway, up the stairs.
Every floorboard groaned in protest of yet another pair of feet hounding them. From somewhere upstairs came the reassuring sound of his friend’s aunt and uncle still snoring like a cargo ship’s foghorn.
Mort made it ever so quietly to his guest room, eased the door closed, and collapsed onto the bed and inhaled deeply.
Tomorrow there would be questions. Tomorrow there would be explanations he could not possibly provide. But tonight—blessed, forgiving tonight—no one was awake.
As far as anyone would know, the stampede had been spontaneous, mysterious, and an act of God or nature or mischievous spirits.
Mort closed his eyes. His stomach, mercifully, had finally settled.
His eventual travel article on Spain would be titled “Authentic Experiences in Northern Spain: A Deep Dive into Local Culture.”
He would focus extensively on the remarkable warmth of Spanish hospitality and their enviable ability to find humor in life’s unexpected moments, while tactfully omitting certain livestock-related incidents.
No need for his editor to know that his “deep cultural immersion” had been quite so literal—or so aromatic.
