Google Maps Strikes Again!

"What An Incredible Smell You've Discovered!!"

While nosing around up in the Texas Panhandle, I discovered one of three locations that could well provide some of the foulest odors known to man...

I was actually looking for a prison way out there in the sticks.  I've got a friend that is apparently festering in durance vile somewhere out there, and whilst doing a low-level swoop over Swisher County, I stumbled upon a trio of odd sights.

They all follow roughly the same design.  Row after row of square sections, with a huge body of water nearby.  Also, long strips of something lined up in rows.   Like this:

Curious...  Very curious...

Unless, of course, you've been inside one, and survived the olfactory assault and lived to tell the tale!

Still not sure what you're looking at?  Let's zoom in!

(Enhance...tiktiktik...  Enhance...tiktiktik)

Hmmmm...  Looks like a bunch of black & white somethings...  Zoom in some more!


(Enhance...tiktiktik...  Enhance...tiktiktik)

Congratulations!  You've discovered cows!!

Yup, one of three huge feedlots in the area, each of which generates tons of odiferous cowshit and bovine urine by the swimming pool-full.

That's probably the big runoff pond on the right.

Those dark strips are mounds of manure.  They dump 'em, bulldoze 'em and cover them in plastic and old tires to keep them from blowing in the wind.

Here's the stockpile of tires:

You've got to keep water spraying on the manure mounds, otherwise the temperature of the rotting and fermenting poo could very well rise high enough to spontaneously combust.

And you do NOT want that.  The only thing that smells worse than a feedlot?

A *burning* feedlot...