There ARE worse things than wearing flats, like say...being covered in cow shit.
We have a new client - an agriculture client. And today was Farm Ed day where this ag client teaches inner-city kids where their hamburgers come from. I was involved in Farm Ed day from a media standpoint, and both the newspaper and one TV station came out, yay me.
I was also taking photos of the event, so I got there around 8:30 this morning and started getting shots of all the displays and signage and such. They had this male turkey in a pen next to two more turkeys in another pen. The male that was alone had all his tail feathers puffed up and was gobbling really loud to try & get the female's attention. (She, of course, was ignoring him.)
And there was one of those sheep-herding dogs like in Babe that was rustling up a couple of sheep, which by the way, might be the dumbest animals on the planet.
And there was a REAL! LIVE! BEEF! COW! That became a bit of a joke with me & my PR co-worker Amy (did I mention we hired a second PR girl? Another post.). When I sent the media advisory over to the client for them to sign off on before I distributed it, the girl there added some more info (which was good, b/c honestly I didn't know that much about the event and most of what I wrote in the advisory I just pulled out of my ass.). She wrote this sentence: "Children will have the chance to touch a real live beef cow."
So anyhoo, this real live beef cow - which hello? Have you ever seen a real live beef cow? Two words: GI. NORMOUS. She'd just had a real live beef calf two weeks ago. And the calf was in the pen with her so they were warning you not to get tooooo close to the pen b/c the real live beef mama was feeling pretty protective. I was just trying to do my job and get some photos of the inner-city yoots around the REAL! LIVE! BEEF! COW! but apparently I didn't step back FAR ENOUGH for the mama (did I mention ginormous??) because she stomped her humongous hoof at me...and splattered me with cow shit. Seriously.
After I got over the first initial shock ("holy shit, that got on me") it was pretty fucking funny. And I do mean it was all over me - splatters the size of a quarter - but luckily not above the shoulders b/c that would have just been gross.
I went into the restroom to get a wet paper towel and clean it off. Of course, all I did was smear it all over my pretty pink velvet blazer.
I was quite entertaining to the gaggle of fifth-grade girls in the bathroom.
When I came out, Amy called me. I grabbed for my phone on my belt but then I couldn't answer it b/c IT WAS COVERED IN COW SHIT.
After the event, I went home to change before going into work. I found A LOT more of it when I changed. It was all on my belt and down the side of my jeans.
By the time I got to work the story was pretty well known. I sent the following email b/c apparently people thought that I had actually been shat upon:
From: Kalisah
To: Staff
Subject: The [redacted] event was a real success
Channel 5 AND the Commercial Appeal both came out.
And yes, I did in fact get splattered with cow poop. It's the price we pay for being hard-working, dedicated PR professionals, I'm afraid. (It's a shitty business.)
But - just to clarify - the cow was protecting her 2-week-old baby calf from me. She stomped her (huge) hoof on the ground, which happened to be dotted with cow poop and thus, the splattering.
The cow didn't actually POOP on me.
Just to clarify.
