I’m a city girl, or I used to be anyway. I was born and raised in California and spent my childhood from age 6 in a busy, but not too populated town called Lodi. I think the population back then was around 30,000. By the time I left, in 1992, it had grown to around 75,000 people. It must be well over 100,000 by now.

Even though I was raised in a city, I learned where milk, eggs, steak, bacon, and fried chicken came from. Some kids don’t learn that, believe it or not. Anyway, I left that wonderful little city and so many great memories behind – also some not-so-great memories with the ex – and moved to southwest Missouri to be with my Dad. I wasn’t sure what to expect because I had never lived in that part of the country before or in such a rural location, and was never around farm animals.

Our house sits on 20 acres or so, with neighbors who are at least 1/4 mile away. (I love that about being here!!) The neighbors have cows on their property that borders ours. There are cows across the road much of the year. There are cows right to the left of us, too. You can hear cows giving birth and you can hear them mooing their damn-fool heads off at various times of the day. I’ve grown used to it after about 25 years!

But in the beginning, I thought how the hell am I supposed to get used to this? One morning, a mooing woke me up around 8am. I remember thinking it was awfully loud. In fact, it sounded like it was right outside my bedroom window. I just figured I was so fast asleep and it was so quiet that the sudden noise sounded much closer than it was.

I was wrong. I rolled over and opened my eyes. My eyes caught a movement by the window and to my surprise, I caught the rear end of a cow as it waltzed by. It let out another loud moo. See, it sounded close because it WAS close! I jumped out of bed and ran to the front door. There were several cows in our beautifully groomed yard. Now there was cow shit and big hoof marks in the damp lawn. Great, just great. I woke Dad up and he called the neighbors to let them know their bovine had just escaped. Apparently, they seized the opportunity to eat OUR grass, because it was greener!

Image Credit Pixabay

We got dressed quickly and went outside to make sure these silly beef patties would stay in the yard and not get slaughtered in the busy road. The neighbors came quickly and started calling for their roast beasts to come to them. The cows knew the voice of their owners because each cow went toward the gate where our neighbors were calling from. That is, except one cow. It started to follow the others but as soon as it saw its owner, it turned around and ran. Just so happens I was right behind that giant meatloaf! It looked me in the eye as it ran toward me and being a city girl, all I could think to do was RUN! I thought, Sweet Jesus I hope I can outrun a cow! I ran like the devil was after me!

The neighbors laughed, and even though I was embarrassed, I laughed too! In my defense, how was I supposed to know what that silly cow was going to do?