Sneaky Area Vegetarian Group Promotes Controversial 'Morning After" Saltlick To Somewhat Skeptical Palouse Ranchers

In a startling escalation in the long simmering war between those traditional forces who view a heifer's place as being in the pasture and those enlightened souls who want to free the unfortunate beasts from the 'birth, calving, and slaughter' cycle that has dominated the average life of the typical cow for 1000's of years, a local vegetarian activist group, Moooo-ve-On.Org, launched a media intensive ad campaign to convince the Palouse ranchers (and the herd itself) of the wisdom of releasing the area heifers from the stifling, mundane, socially inhibiting drudgery of motherhood once and for all and thus allow them to compete with the bulls on a more even social basis - as is only right. "Oh, what in dadburn tarnation are these people going to come up with next!" bellowed Old Man Festoon, 82, an area rancher patriarch. "First they convinced the whole dern world that our cows needed fall-out shelters to protect them from the doggone Ruskies, (which was revived again during the age of terrorism!) then we had to pump 'mood music' into the mating pens to sooth the anxiety of those no-good underachieving bulls, then they tried to pass that 'flatulence tax' to fight that phony global warming nonsense and now THIS! I could be wrong, but it seems like that whole darn vegetarian lobby is trying to drive us ranchers out of business or something! Why don't they spend all that free time they have picking on the bean sprout farmers or whatever! This has just gotten out of hand!" he screamed before resorting to a coughing fit and having to have the oxygen mask pushed on his bristly face by his loving and quite intimidating wife, Gertrude Snopes, 79, a woman who makes Queen Victoria seem like a moderate libertine.

"I just don't see why these big, strong, supposedly rugged, Marlboro-Man-wannabee ranchers are so afraid of some little old heifer having a say in her life! Why is that such a scary thing to these big, tough men? What are they trying to hide?" said Lotta Birtch, a Mooo-ve-on.org spokesperson. "I thought these guys were supposed to be rugged individualists who could take on the world as it comes. Seems a little silly to me to be afraid of a simple heifer being able to chart out her own life, doesn't it?" she asked rhetorically with that all too familiar sneer of the committed liberal. "This is a new day" she said while making a protest salute. "Let our heifers go! Let our heifers go! Let our heifers go! Let our heifers go!" she chanted insanely - even after everyone left the room.