I won’t mention any names, but some people around here seem to have serious hang-ups about cows.  In response to their constant harping on beef and steak and gnawing on bones, I thought I’d share some moo-moos.

As for calling them moo-moos, my sister Roni came up with that one umpteen years ago during a drive from Texas to Colorado.  We had long surpassed the giddy, car-crazy stage of boredom.  To entertain herself—and subsequently the rest of us—she leaned over the front seat backwards and used her hands to show us how moo-moos (cows) and neigh-neighs (horses) walked down the inside of the windshield.  We had just passed a field full of both…

Still, she was insane.  We all were by that point.  And oh how we laughed at her silliness… and our own.  It certainly lightened the mood and gave us all a jolly ol’ time in the middle of a boring, mundane, catatonic drive that seemed to last far too long for our mental health.

By the way, these are cows from the family farm.  You’ll notice there are some babies in the mix.  Watching them frolic and play is quite entertaining, but even more surprising and awe-inspiring is when the adults pull the same antics by leaping and kicking and bolting across one of the many pastures they inhabit (they’re moved from pasture to pasture as the grass grows).

Some of the pastures are wide open while others have plenty of natural cover.  Where there exist ample trees and brush, the mothers give birth.  In fact, the first thing I was told when I arrived on Sunday was that a calf had been lost—an absolute first.  It only took getting near the baby for the mother to reveal where she had hidden it deep in spring foliage and woodland cover.  Not so lost after all…

[note that these pictures come from both of my recent trips to East Texas; also note there are two herds and I’m not showing the totality of either, and I’m also not showing the details of all the pastures; call me paranoid, but I’d rather not provide enough visual clues for anyone to locate the family farm]