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Friday, July 6, 2012

COWTOWN (On Being Skittish)


This morning we are on day five of our walk and building a relationship with the cows here at the Ranch.  I grew up on the shores of the East Coast and so I didn't grow up with many kinds of animals, just the squirrels and cats and dogs and hamsters. 

Now I am living on a Ranch with horses, cows, chickens, lamas, hawks and all kinds of animals.  So I have been a bit apprehensive about the cows...cause there are a lot of them and my neighbor said that they don't like dogs and so I have been concerned that my dog would get munched on.

Over the last couple of days I have creeped up on the cows and just let them get familiar with us...sometimes they seem curious and other times aggressive, but we have stayed our distance pretty much.  Today we got brave and my dog Pete even braver...don't tell him he is a poodle...he doesn't know what he is but he sure is confident with who he is (see video above).

What came up today is just how skittish the cows are.  That they jump like I would hurt them...and maybe they have been hurt or maybe it is tons of generations of fear like in their DNA that makes them naturally afraid of humans since we are their predator.  As I was watching them...I felt the similarity with them...as a human...it seems that I am just as skittish around people but that I have some how learned to hide or mask it better than a cow.  After reading Winston Churchhill's "A History of The English Speaking Peoples" we have spent century after century chopping each others heads off just to shut each other up ... to control one another...and we have different ways of doing that now, and it's no wonder I am so skittish.  

It will take some time for the cows to get used to us (Pete, Marma and I)...to realize that we don't want to hurt them, that we don't see them as supper and maybe one day, when I walk towards them...they won't jump and run away and my camera will take a steady shot of film.
  

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