COWS

While walking today on a pretty narrow path, surrounded on each side by high fences, I turn a corner and come directly face-to-face with a sheer wall of about 30 large black-and-white cows, coming directly at me. It is not apparent where they are going—other than straight toward me—or how we are going to pass each other. These are docile cows, including some milk cows, and no bulls. But still, their collective weight must be several hundred times mine. And these are not high-level thinkers that you can reason with and explain how we should all share the road together. It is a daunting sight to see that much living beef come ambling toward you, while taking up every available inch of the narrow road.

Fortunately, a farmer is right in the thick of things, walking with the cows and turning them off to a side path, just before they reach me; I imagine that he is taking them to lunch in a fresh field of grass. But one of the cows doesn’t want to go along with the program. He is either the class clown, or the most curious student in the school. He insists on pushing me ever farther to the side, while trying to sniff at me, with his huge cow head moving inches from my body.

I seriously consider whacking him on the head with my stick. I am close to doing just that when, bless her heart, the farmer’s wife, pushing through the pack from the back, comes up and gives this udderly recalcitrant beast a stinging prod on the back with her switch. That gets the cow’s attention, and it gets the animal to move, slowly and reluctantly, away from me.