Apparently, some exhibitors have been accused of putting hairpieces on their show cattle at the Ohio State Fair last year. What this means is that they took excess hair from the cow's body—from other cows, even—and strategically glued it to other spots in order to give the animal a more healthy and proportional appearance.

What were these people thinking? Who was the first one to say, "I know. We'll spruce up the old girl with a specialty coiffure." And don't they realize there are truckloads of products out there designed for hair re-growth? There are pills of all sorts and applications of medicated cream. There's even a product that, when sprayed on the scalp, makes a creepy, cotton-candy nest of wispy hair. (This is the commercial you see just before you realize you've stayed up entirely too late. It was shown briefly in Goodfellas.)

Really, though, I'm more worried about the precedent. Now that this line has been crossed, what sort of bovine cosmetics will be attempted next? Grecian Formula for the Anguses? Silicone udder implants for the Jerseys? It's gone too far, I tell you, too far. This ridiculous beauty standard that these cows are asked to live up to—no cow can achieve it, okay? All it does is make them feel bad about themselves, to the detriment of all cows.

I'm trying to imagine what this last-minute beauty session must have been like—a pit crew of men armed with tiny tubes of glue and buckets of shorn cow hair, painstakingly applying it, clump by clump, as if preparing a float for the Rose Bowl parade. Ah, the adrenaline, the smell of sweat, the fevered rush of creation. One of them, perhaps, whispering in poor Bessie's ear: "You'll be the prettiest heifer there ever was . . . this contest is yours . . . those other cows don't have half the class you have in your hind hoof . . . ." What pride they must have had in the finished product, in the glorious specimen of cowhood they had manufactured. The shapely hip, the smooth withers—truly a vision of bovine grace.

It takes a special kind of twisted to do something like this. But then, we are talking about the Ohio State Fair. I have a feeling that even if these guys had not been found out, they would have eventually gone to the police anyway, just so they could have someone to impress with the skillful way they perpetrated their very, very weird crime. I can see it now. The lead perpetrator limps away from the station, just as it dawns on the special agent that the entire story was fabricated using details in the room. Can it be? That coffee mug says Holstein on the bottom. And that picture on the wall? It's of an obese woman with a black and white wig. "Noooooooooo!" the agent screams, shaking his fist at the sky.

I'm telling you, don't mess with these guys. They'll flip ya.