If you're a new reader to Prairie - welcome ! This is the 100th posting to my little Prairie blog and I'm dedicating it to my muse - the cow. After all, cows are the reason I started blogging in the first place. Up until two years ago, I only thought of cows as delicious. Although I've become close to them, I will eat the occasional steak and cheeseburger. And yet, after endless hours of observation and interacting with bovinus, I consider them to be more than just dinner. I now see them as intelligent, interesting and extremely entertaining creatures. Let me tell you a few reasons why I love cows so much.
Cows are funny. I get the humour in them.
Discriminating and fussy. Here are my mates sheltering under the trees outside my window, finding cover from the rain. You and I would do the same thing, right? See, not so stupid after all.
I swear, sometimes I feel they're trying to communicate with me. Look at the ears. Like some sort of secret cow language, these ear wags.
Right ear.....
Now the left ear. The tail swishing must be part of the secret code also.
Cows are colourful and romantic even.
Cows can be a surreal mix of fact and fantasy. They appear in fairy tales, fables and limericks.
Artists sketch them, painters brush them into different settings and colours.
Just like me - they love to kiss !!
But the thing I like best about cows, is the poker-faced stare. Deadpan.
There it is again, the stare. This, is why I stand in a field, getting sprinkled by rain, annoyed by gnats and having to smell the cow poop on my shoes, to capture that stare - that's my reward. And it only happens for only a few seconds and then, the head goes down and it's back to some serious eating.
I know what you're thinking. The woman takes too many photos of cows. You're thinking I'm a nutter. Let me say in my defense, that I'm not the only photographer who has become consumed with a subject. Take for instance, Alfred Stieglitz, the renown photographer, who took over 300 known and catalogued photos of his wife's breasts, stomach, buttocks and other bits - over and over and over again. I like to think, that my cow's bits are far more interesting than Georgia O'Keeffe's bits.
Cows are posers - they are experts at juxtaposing.
So because it's Prairie's 100th blog post, I wanted to celebrate by having a little contest. The Reader who can come up with the funniest caption for the photo below, will win one of my lovely cow cards. Remember to think like a cow !
So I love you and leave you now and end this post with a few inspiring cow quotes.
"All the good ideas I ever had came to me while milking a cow" Grant Wood - American Artist
"Opie, you haven't finished your milk. We can't put it back in the cow you know." Aunt Bea - Mayberry RFD
Who was the first guy who looked at a cow and said "I think I'll drink whatever comes out of those things when I squeeze them" Calvin and Hobbs - Fictional Comic Characters
"If happiness truly consisted in physical ease and freedom from care, then the happiest individual would not be either a man nor a woman: it would be, I think, an American cow." William Lyons Phelps - Educator
"Don't have a cow man." Bart Simpson - The Simpsons
"I'm all about cows and the proof of it is on the bottom of my shoes." Marsha Stewart - Author of Prairie
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