Poor Virginia was so fat and lumbered with so many layers of lard that nasty people called her a cow. She was round and rotund. Obesity stalked her like some perverse paparazzi. Corpulence haunted her like a corybantic nightmare. However, she just couldn’t stop loading the shopping trolley of her tummy with blue whale burgers, giant squid rings, and elephant spare ribs.
The fatter she got the more they called her a cow and the more she cried. The more she cried the sadder she felt. The sadder she felt the more she ate. The more she ate the fatter she got. The fatter she got the more they called her cow…. The vicious, voracious cycle continued.
A Saturnalia of feasting and farting was the norm. She tucked into backpack-sized packets of crisps, waded into tubs of ice cream, and guzzled barrels of cola.
However, she reserved a special penchant for meat. Like a hungry carnivore roaming the wild savannas she kept a watchful eye for a straggling chicken nugget or a trailing turkey escalope. She’d pounce on any vulnerable strip of bacon or an unsuspecting sausage roll and rip it to shreds.
She drank from the Circean cup to the dregs of gluttony and licking the last drops from her lips was heard to say the momentous words… “Burrrrp”.
And so she grew… bigger and bigger, rounder and rounder, into a colossal snowball of fat rolling down the precipitous mountainside of ill health.
The day finally came when this Brobdingnagian blob of blubber could get out of her bed no more. The doctor asked her why she ate so. She replied, because people called her a cow. The doctor informed her that if she didn’t stop eating meat the grim reaper would sauté her out of existence. He advised her exercise and put her on a diet of vegetables.
Virginia was determined to live and took serious steps to lose weight. Meat was anathema to her now and she cleared her refrigerator of all forms of it. She threw out buckets of chicken drumsticks; chucked away baskets of sirloin steaks; and tossed away hampers of lamb chops.
She wanted to turn over a new leaf and metamorphose into something pretty. So down she would run to the green grocers, scavenge for vegetables and forage for fruit.
Soon she was a full-blown dyed in the wool vegetarian. She was aroused by the sight of radishes. Lettuce made her legs wobble. Spinach left her speechless. Her heavy pounds fell by the wayside as she strode rapidly towards the ticker tape of slenderness.
In no time she was cavorting in the grasslands of good health. She gambolled with the lambs in the pastures of delight and hopped with the hairs in the fields of salubrity.
People came from far and wide to see this spectacle in the meadows. They ogled in astonishment and gawked in amazement at how she nibbled at green leaves and chomped on greener grass.
Virginia was feeling great and chewing the cud of contentment until she walked into Ted’s Texan Steak house to test her newfound resolve. She ordered herself a plate of the greenest green salad with bottle-green lettuce as starters, olive-green foliage as main course, and lush-green leaves for dessert. She was about to tuck in when she overheard the big burly truck driver point to her food and snicker, “Hey take a look at that cow!”
