moo

"Moo" is a totally inadequate transliteration of cow talk. I know this. I spent all night at the Country House (capitalized so you know to pronounce it with a upper-crust, lock-jaw accent) listening to complex cow conversation.

In fact, most cows sound startlingly like deaf-mute prison inmates complaining about their accommodations.

Really loudly.

I got up and went out back stark naked, 'cos, a) that's how I sleep, and b) you can do that at the Country House without much risk of anything but a cow, horse or goat seeing you. I was looking for the cows, wanting to tell one or two to shut the fuck up and let me go back to sleep, but there weren't any back there. That made me a little nervous. They'd been mooing from the back of the house, dammit, they should *BE* in the back of the house. Was there someone in the woods, perhaps an escaped deaf-mute prison inmate, say, complaining about his accommodations? I didn't know. I was extremely naked, sadly lacking in cow targets for verbal abuse, and now on the lookout for a moving orange jumpsuit.

I wandered around the deck to the side of the house. This felt a little sketchier. I mean, there was still very little chance of anything but the above mentioned fauna to catch a glimpse of all the extra bits of me that have been accumulating over the last couple of decades, but I had less protection from the house. Now I was visible from the road...

Ok, dirt road. Driveway, really. Whatever.

It's moo(oooo)t anyway. All that was out front were a bunch of cows. And as I made myself known, they all turned and stared. If you've never been stared at by a bunch of cows, you can't possibly know what that feels like. The first thing that happens is you look behind you to see if someone with a barbeque pit is warming up the mesquite. Second, after you realize that they're actually staring at YOU, you anthropomorphize their thoughts. "What the hell is that?" "I don't know, I've never seen anything like it before!" "Ew. Needs fur." I took a moment to reflect on the diversity of nature, then yelled "SHUT THE FUCK UP!" to the white cow standing closest to me. It looked me up and down, turned, and bolted across the creek.

Ooh. Ego crushing. I need to start working out again.

I did my best to shoo them away, but those cows are damn stubborn. They stood, steadfastly mooing, complaining about their accommodations, and questioning my presence.

I left them to their complex conversation and went back to bed.