I can't believe I spent time on this. ;-) ecopy then apply patches which I will be adding to bug.
Created attachment 140711 [details, diff] applies to cowsay-3.03-r1.ebuild after ebuild is ecopy'd
Created attachment 140713 [details, diff] belongs in ${FILESDIR}
fixing up the sed in the ebuild that basically inserts what you have to patch lateron felt a bit nicer to me, so I went that way. Added to the tree, thanks.