HERETICAL COW SLAUGHTERED

Story: Johnson's Grove's Albert "Zip" Reuben is famous in these parts for his ability to foresee the future when he sings She'll Be Coming 'Round the Mountain (see: Retiree Foretells Futures in Song, September, 1996, vol. 3, Issue #9). On April 16, at Mackenzie's Feed and Relay, he was heard to sing, "The cow of Leonardo, she will come, she will come." The townsfolk around him, used to such outbursts, and actually quite fascinated by the phenomena, set aside their eggs and corned beef hash, and began an earnest discussion as to what the lyric could possibly be foretelling. Obviously a calf would be born soon. But no-one knew who this Leonardo was to which Reuben had referred. Debate continued in town for the next couple of weeks, but no avail. The matter was soon dropped.

     Then on May 5, dairy farmer Gail Kartoffel announced the birth of a calf to one of her older heifers. But this was no ordinary calf. The black markings on the calf's left side were too regular, and seemed to form a picture, but what it was could not easily be ascertained. Kartoffel invited friends and family to examine the tiny cow. Finally, Reverend Patrick Hennesy identified the image. And he was none too pleased.

     "This image is heretical!" he had exclaimed. He explained that the pattern on the calf's side was a detail of two parts of Leonardo DaVinci's "The Last Supper." Long a believer that Leonardo was a heretic himself (thinking that Leonardo may have fabricated one version of the (a?) Shroud of Turin), he claimed that this poor animal was a blasphemy before God. The left-hand spot, sure enough, appeared to mimic that anomalous image from the disciples to the left of Christ, where an extra hand appears, pointing a dagger at a disciple's belly. Art historians have not ever concluded why Leonardo put the hand in the painting, as none of the disciples could possibly be holding the dagger. And there on the calf's side is a representation of two disciples with the hand and dagger between them.

     Next to this image on the calf's body is a black spot that correlates with the disciple standing immediately to the right of Christ. Rev. Hennesy notes that Leonardo did not paint this disciple as a man, but instead as a woman. Both these images from "The Last Supper," he concludes, make the entire work blasphemous.

     The good reverend's words did not fall on deaf ears. Kartoffel, a very devout Christian and part of Rev. Hennesy's congregation at Bethlehem United, had the calf slaughtered and burned.

     Her feelings on the situation? "I don't know how the devil got to my poor little calf," she says, "but by God, no one will ever have to look upon that blasphemy of nature again."

     What would Leonardo say?