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A (Bovine) Pastoral Symphonya
By PATRICIA BROWN DAVIS
Cows were a fairly large priority in our family when my three daughters were growing up on the farm along the Stony Fork Road. (You might say I grew up there, too.) I found these large bovines clumsy, seemingly stupid, and just a bit annoying when I had to care for them. Saying they pushed me and the edges of our fences beyond the point of return was often a fair statement. But then again, my kids did the same thing. Mostly I was amazed other countries and religions raised them to sacred status; they seemed so common to me. But this was an agricultural region in our state, and both sides of my family had been farmers. Still, I sometimes assigned human qualities to those unsuspecting creatures. Such as the time we were treated to cow choir.
It was a cold, late-Saturday afternoon in October during the 1960s. We were all at home. All of a sudden, I heard an inordinate amount of blatting and bawling. It sounded like the entire herd of beef cattle performing some sort of choral rendition in an inharmonious round.
I ran to our back window and looked in the direction of the sound. It was at least part of the herd. About six or seven cows were charging down the hill behind our place in one long rank, their sides touching each other, all lined up like the Rockettes or a row of musicians in a marching band. They were headed right toward us at a faster-than-normal clip, their hooves dislodging the stony earth, raising a cloud of dust, and coming straight down the hill in the steepest part. That was not the usual case for cows. They were better known for creating paths of least resistance that meander up and down hills. They looked more like lemmings on a suicide run to the sea. How weird was that? I’d not seen anything like this before. Ever.
As they loomed closer, I could see their knees were scraped and dirty and their nostrils were flared and caked with dirt. One cow had a small branch dangling from her horns. Their eyes were glazed as they stared blankly ahead of them and continued to bawl. Then the group ran right into our wooden barbed-wired fence. Like one living organism, they all backed up, swung in a wheel turn and charged right back up over the steepest part of the hill from where they’d just come. A couple of them stumbled but recovered quickly to stay with the group as they charged to the top of the hill in one tight unit. When they reached the summit, they again fanned around in one large turn and came right back down the hill as fast as they had the first time.
By now, Gene—my husband at the time—and our daughters had joined me at the window to watch this odd and erratic behavior. “Those damn fools are drunk again,” Gene muttered.
One of the girls said, “How’d they get drunk, Daddy?”
“They ate the frozen crab apples in the orchard. When the weather warms up, they thaw out and ferment, sometimes right on the tree,” he said. “Those damn fools get into the apples and don’t know enough to stop eating them.”
They bleated, blatted, and bawled all evening—long after dark. At first it was very annoying. Then it started to get funny. Finally, I even called a friend so she could hear the out-of-tune chorale on the phone. As the evening drew on, one by one they finally quieted down and we all went to sleep.
Early in the morning we awoke to hear bawling and moaning. Looking out the window, we watched them all lying around in the pasture. Gene’s first words were, “The damn fools have hangovers.” They didn’t move all morning but just lay there moaning. Their noises were sporadic and slowed down as the morning progressed. Finally, they all got to their feet, and in one long, dragging line, plodded toward the creek that flowed through our property. They were thirsty and, I mused, perhaps more than a bit dehydrated.
By then I was identifying with my own occasional late nights when I had imbibed too much and then lay around all the next day, drinking glasses of water and holding my throbbing head. I recalled my trips to the kitchen and the spigot and remembered I had also plodded along slowly and didn’t allow my feet to hit the floor too hard.
Perhaps we are more like cows than I wanted to admit. As I thought about my aversion to these creatures, I was reminded that ever since I was a baby, I’d had an allergic skin reaction to their milk. I began to wonder if this had anything to do with my negative thoughts toward these creatures.
This was the only time I ever witnessed our cows in this strange and peculiar rite. I’m thankful most of my friends never saw me in that condition, either.
Patricia Brown Davis is a professional musician. These days she spends considerable time in community service and writing her memoirs. You can contact her at
patd@mountainhomemag.com.
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