So, I walk to work with cows.
My walk takes me through two commons, and there are small herds of cows that are often out grazing and chewing cud and playing poker as soon as our backs are turned and whatever else cows do. As someone who likes almost all animals, especially those I can invest with funny voices, I always like seeing them, even though they are seriously stinkier and shittier than you can possibly imagine—sorry to go all copro-centric for a moment, but seriously, wherever they go is marked by a veritable Jackson Pollock masterpiece of poop. But aside from the stinkiness (and considering Remy’s personal habits, you know my tolerance of this is high), they’re pretty cool, all soft-eyed chomping as they watch you go past.
However. Because they are, I assume, regular grazers in a common that is really popular with commuters, they’re relatively blase about humans being around (or maybe all cows are—god knows if I were that huge, I’d be like “oh yeah, bitch with headphones, it’s on”), which means in two weeks of commuting, I’ve had two rather close encounters with cows.
The first was when I was crossing a teensy bridge that crosses over a little creek. One herd had just crossed the bridge, and as I approached I saw a final cow peek out of the shrubbery on the other side. I waited for it to cross, but it was just watching me, so I started to go…just as it lost patience with me and started to walk across as well. We’d both committed, so I figured better to keep to a slow and steady pace, but the cow was clearly a bit freaked out by me, and did I mention this was a teensy bridge? It was right about when I was eighteen inches away from it that I noticed this particular cow had…horns. Crap. I had a couple seconds of thinking “Should I stop? No, because then I’ll panic it more. Jesus christ cows are big. And if this cow charges me, I have…nowhere to go,” and then the cow panicked and ran away past me, and I exhaled.
The second time, I was walking along the path near the edge of the common, and similarly to the picture above, a bunch of brown cows were hanging out nearby. Apparently, in spring a cow’s thoughts turn to ass-whupping, because there was a little scrum of four or five cows mooing menacingly at each other and butting heads. They were a decent way away from the path, but a particularly aggressive push from one of them sent them careening surprisingly fast towards me, and I fully admit to scampering like a little girl away from the cows, that one comic of “Tamara Drewe” where the cheating husband gets trampled to death by cows planted firmly in my brain.
I still like seeing these cows, but I’m a bit warier these days—I think my initial impulse to traipse over to pet their little noses and scratch their little ears has been well and truly stifled (mostly by all the poop. SERIOUSLY YOU HAVE NO IDEA.). Well, at least until I figure out how to com-moo-nicate (sorry, couldn’t resist) the fact that I’m a vegetarian and, therefore, their friend, at which point I will become their cud-chewing overlord, make them all snowshoes to get over the cattle guards, and at long last CAMBRIDGE SHALL BE MINE.
