Anybody remember the shmoo?

It was a critter dreamed up by Al Capp, the cartoonist who created the L’il Abner strip half a century ago, give or take. 

The shmoo was about the size and shape of a bowling pin, except it had tiny legs, a perpetual grin and big friendly eyes. 

Shmoos ran in packs and liked to hang around with humans. They lived on air and water, liked to be stroked and fondled like puppies, but most of all, they loved to be eaten. Why, a shmoo would jump right into the frying pan in anticipation.

Tasted like fried chicken, readers were told.

The shmoo was a socialist’s wet dream – a plentiful foodstock that didn’t have to be fed or stabled, cultivated or harvested, taken to market or slaughtered. 

Most of all, the shmoo was a hot meal that didn’t engender feelings of guilt or remorse in consumers. The shmoos wanted people to eat them.

Mother Nature never did give us the shmoo but she came tantalizingly close.  Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce The Dexter.

The Dexter is … well, let’s call it a lawn mower. It runs very quietly, gets excellent mileage with minimal maintenance.

The Dexter not only keeps your grass trimmed, it fertilizes it at the same time. And the Dexter uses no oil at all. In fact, it uses no gasoline. Or electricity, or batteries or solar panels.

The Dexter runs on – how cool is this? – grass.

Big deal, you say. Goats and sheep can eat grass – hell, I’ve got deer in my yard that do the same thing.

Yeah, but can you get a quart of milk off them every day?

The Dexter is a cow. It moos like a cow, gives milk like a cow, eats grass and grows horns and has calves like a cow. 

The big difference between a Dexter and, say, a Holstein is that a decent milking Holstein is the size of a Dodge minivan. A Dexter is no bigger than a Labrador retriever. 

A nasty-tempered or just plain clumsy Holstein can crush you like a grape against a stable wall. If it steps on your foot you won’t walk for a week. Whereas Dexters are affectionate and almost small enough to pick up in your arms.

And unlike the shmoo, the Dexter is real. It exists. It is a mountain breed from Ireland that has been around for ages and is now found on farms around the world. More than 4,100 Dexter cows were registered in 2007 by the Dexter Cattle Society. 

A dozen or so of those cows live on the rolling fields of an eight-hectare farm belonging to poet and songwriter Pam Ayres who lives in the Cotswolds in England.

It’s a family affair sans bureaucratic interference and that’s just the way Pam Ayres likes it. 

“The government has no interest in where our food comes from or how it tastes,” she told a Sunday Times reporter, “So it’s nice to set your own welfare and quality standards.”

The Dexter is just the opening wedge of the blooming mini-cow boom. 

The Australian government is getting involved in a big way. They’ve cross-bred cattle strains to produce two new breeds – the Mini-Hereford and the Lowline Angus.  The latter can produce 70 percent of the meat of its big sister, yet it stands only 99 centimetres high.

So what’s the big attraction? Economy of scale, for one thing.

As any cattle producer can tell you, the cost of raising conventional cattle is going through the barn roof. Heating, transportation -- and especially the cost of feed – are all escalating astronomically. 

Mini-cattle obviously take up less room and need ‘way less fuel than their oversized cousins.

My hunch is that for some consumers these mini-breeds are going to cut out the cattle-producing middlemen entirely.  If you’ve got access to a couple of acres of grass, why buy your milk and meat at the supermarket? You can raise it yourself. 

As one Dexter owner says “as long as you’ve got plenty of grass they will be fine. You don’t really have to feed them … and they have a lovely temperament.”

Ah, there’s the rub. These Dexters and Mini-Herefords and Lowline Angus’ are, when all is said and done … kinda cute.

I have a theory that if some future anthropologist could travel back in time and interview us, the conversation would go something like this: “Let me get this straight. You … ate … your fellow creatures? You actually raised animals, fed them and sheltered them and nurtured them, then you sent them off to abattoirs and slaughter houses and you had them killed and dismembered and separated into gobbets of protein in shrink-wrapped packets on Styrofoam trays and you sat down and … ate … them?

And we will say, “Well yeah, we did. Right up until the Dexters. That’s when we all went vegetarian. Those Dexters were just too damn cute to kill.”

Arthur Black is a syndicated humour columnist.