Cows

The cows are gonna make me love this place.

This is Number 7.  We met her on our Sunday walk down our road to the rancher's fields.  Spouse-the-Boy-Who-Grew-Up-Hand-Milking-Cows-Named-Ginger spent about ten minutes waving grass over a barbed wire fence while making the awesomest moo's you ever heard to get Number 7 to shimmy over to us.  When Number 7 got within about ten feet, the whole family started calling out to her, "C'mon Number 7," "Come'ere Number 7,"  "You can do it Number 7."  We were all equally committed to the cause.  It was very communal, united, of one heart - very family.  Number 7, despite all our encouragement, felt a little cautious.  She turned her nose just short of chomping grass more than once.  But eventually she twirled her big, black tongue around the long blades of the tantalizing greens Spouse-the-Victorious fanned toward her.  Captain Kindergarten was so giddy he could hardly keep his shorts on.  Number 7 turned to CK's shorter bunch of grass while the Spouse reloaded which made all that was wrong in CK's universe, right.

As you can see, Number 7 brought her bovine junta with her when she came to the fence.  They kind of approached us in the flying V.  At one point I looked up from my kids who were bustling back and forth between tearing at the long grass in the ditch and shaking grass through squares of wire and saw the sisters staring at us.  Their heads were lowered.  They were motionless.  It didn't look like too much was going on between their ears, if you know what I mean.  For a second it felt like we had gone over to somebody's house and been all like, "Woo-hoo!  Hi!!!  We are so doggone excited to see you!  Look, we even brought ice cream for dessert.  Man, we are just thrilled out of our doggone socks to be here."  And our hosts were just like, "               ," nothing, deadpan, crickets, tumbleweeds.  And so I giggled because it was kinda awkward and funny like that.

Speaking of awkward and funny - this is what I look like all the time going around with four little kids.  Ridiculous.

Poor CK.  This is right when his universe went back to being wrong, wrong, wrong.  He lost his focus and let the thumb on his broken arm touch the electric fence.  This brought out a story from Spouse-the-Farm-Kid who once grabbed an electric fence full-fisted on a dare when he was growing up.  He said it was quite the jolt.

In a way, because I'm a terrible Mom like that, I'm kind of glad CK got shocked.  Pain can really sear a memory into the ol' brain.  So now when he's all grown up, maybe he'll remember going to see the cows with his family on a beautiful Sunday in the spring and chanting Number 7's name until she came and ate his grass.  I'd sure would love him to have that in his childhood memory banks...to crowd out all those memories of when his Mom was grumpy.