What's eating you?

Uncle Bubba is lucky enough to live where a short drive in nearly any direction takes him past rolling vistas of grazing bovine. At this time of year the black, brown and brindle statues decorate the olive and harvest tan pastures as the old grey bones of the trees, bent from the weight of time, stand watching.

Did you ever wonder about a cow? What do they think? What do they know? Are they contented to graze—unthinking, responding to an instinctual urge--or do they feel overworked and see the pasture as an endless job like 1850’s slaves in a cotton field? Do they tire of the endless nibbling, masticating, chewing and chewing? I can imagine them thinking, "I'd love to take a break, my hoves are killing me, but I've got this whole pasture to keep mowed down!"


I’ve asked people who in my opinion would have the authority to know, and the general consensus is the cows don’t think much at all; they aren’t too smart. I tend to value that thread of thought, yet I see the one way off in the distance, alone in the pasture, separated from the herd; what is she thinking? Or how about the one that forgoes the tiny grass shoots and strains, stretching its neck through what must be painful barbed wire to nibble at a roadside bush? Has that cow decided that there is more to life than following the herd and taking the easy way out?

Maybe they don’t think much and aren’t very bright, or maybe they just don’t care. Perhaps being in a herd of like creatures with the same mundane lives and no real desire or ambition to rise above they’re situation is enough. Maybe they’ve been cow for so long that they have been conditioned into thinking that they have only to rely on the men that oversee them. After all, the farmer and the rancher know what’s best for them; feeding them and giving them shelter, free vaccinations and veterinarian visits. They allow them to forage freely in vast green pastures and are nice enough to put up fences to keep out predators (isn't that why those fences are there?). At ease and fat; why question their authority? It’s not like they’d lead us, I mean them to a slaughter.