Singing Herself To Sleep
When I am working out in the show barn, the cattle tend not to pay much attention to me. I can be making a lot of noise since I like to have novels on audio speakers when I am bundling for hands free work, or when I am using the Skill saw to trim rough edges, talking on the phone, or my occasional banter with myself (I am a good listener after all). The critters come and go as they please an mostly ignore me unless it is getting close to feeding time.
There are many times when I am conversing on the phone when the caller asks what the moaning in the background is. I have to explain that is just my complainer cow. She talks most of the time she is in the barn. She groans out low moos when she is sure that someone else had more grain than she did, she complains if I feed the heifers before I get around to feeding her, she practically sobs with emotion if she has finished her ration of hay and others still have some to eat. She snores a plaintive moan while she is napping, it sounds like she is keeping a running dialog of how she has been wronged.
After I had fed breakfast to the critters in the show barn the other day, I had hung around to bundle up a pallet full of kindling bundles. It adds up to at least three hours of work if I had the time to work on it all in one session when I usually only get 45 minutes to an hour before needing to attend to other tasks or animals around the farm. On this day it looked as if I would have a good stretch of time available and hoped to get the pallet finished off in one go.
It was one of those really rainy days and after the cattle had eaten decided that it would be prudent to loaf around in the barn instead of heading out into the weather. An hour goes by, then two before most of the cows had decided it was time to lay down rather than stand around waiting for the sky to clear. My complainer cow did not lay down as the rest of the animals did, instead she rested her nose against the sturdy post attached to the metal stanchions. It was like a person sitting and resting their chin in their hands to give their neck a break from holding their head up all day.
As she stood there, her relaxed sighing/groaning/complaining could be heard with each exhalation. Her pen mates had finished their naps and were up and moving around but the Complainer Cow remained at the post. Before long the pace of her breathing slowed and the pace of her groaning slowed along with it. I realized she had fallen asleep while complaining with her nose smashed into the post in what must have been uncomfortable but she didn’t seem to notice, if she were human I would swear she would be drooling about now.