Questions about cows

Questions about cows

Nov. 28, 2000

Every once in a while a teacher will call from the local elementary school and ask to bring his or her class out to the ranch on a field trip. (Actually it’s only when a NEW teacher is hired. The veteran teachers know better from past experience.) I always extend an invitation because I feel it’s my duty to impart some of my wisdom to these youngsters while they are still at an age where they don’t already know it all.

The part of their visit the kids always seem to like best is when I introduce them to the various animals by their "pen" names. (I’ve named several after some of my favorite authors.) After a tour of the place I always leave plenty of time for questions and answers. Young children ask great questions. Such as:

"Why do you put bells on cows if they already have horns?"

"Do goats really eat cans?"

"When a dairy cow laughs does milk come out her nose?"

"What happens when a momma pig has more babies than she has faucets?"

And from the same child, ""Do they always drink from the same one?"

"Do animals celebrate holidays like people do?"

"How come black and white cows eat green grass and make white milk?"

If you think it’s easy being a fountainhead of knowledge you try answering those zingers! I do it because I feel a certain responsibility to enhance the lives of our future leaders. It’s the least I can do. And I must say some of my answers have been truly inspired. Like the time I was asked how to stop a rooster from crowing in the morning? "By eating him the night before for dinner," I said, much to the consternation of the squeamish kids who never like to associate animals with the food they eat.

I try to schedule the visits so they coincide with lambing because I know from past experience the kids love to see the ewes jailed with their fuzzy babies. "But why do you keep them in jails?" one cute kid will invariably ask. "What did they do wrong?" To which I reply, "Their crime is in merely being sheep."

The kids are always very well behaved, hooked together with a long rope so no one gets lost, and ALWAYS accompanied by a chaperoning parent who invariably thinks they’re smarter than me when it comes to the birds and the bees! I vividly recall the time a youngster asked me, "How do you tell the boy cows from the girl cows?" I answered truthfully and matter-of-factly: "That’s a good question," I said. "Just remember that the boy, or male, of any species is always better looking."

For some reason this set off the mother who was chaperoning that day and for the rest of the field trip she was arguing with me and generally trying to make me look stupid in front of the youngsters. (A not-so-formidable task, as it turned out.) The chaperone conveyed her superiority by asking with an upturned nose, "Doesn’t the smell of these disgusting animals bother you?"

To which I replied, "My degree of discomfort, madam, depends entirely on the price per pound they are currently bringing in the market place."

I could tell the mother was a member of the tofu-eating, anti-cow crowd. So when one kid asked, "Why do cows have four stomachs and people only one?" I saw my chance to retaliate. "Cows need four stomachs to digest food like alfalfa sprouts, grain and granola that people were never meant to eat in the first place."

Invariably about a week after the field trip I’ll receive a packet of crudely crayoned thank-you letters from the kids with pictures they drew of the animals they met at the ranch. I have saved all the letters, but one in particular is pinned on my bulletin board. It reads, "Thank you very much. My teacher said to say we all had a good time and enjoyed our field trip. But my mother said you were full of manure."

I think I know who the mom of that poor child is!