Boulder County, CO is blanketed with designated open space, which is one of the reasons we chose to settle down here. The trail system is remarkably expansive, covering over 150 miles across more than 45,000 acres of land. And there’s something truly delightful about being minutes away from suburbia, strip malls, and loud highways, but feeling entirely disconnected while traipsing through meadows of vibrant wildflowers.
Springtime out here is a short window filled with unpredictable exhibitions of mother nature: it could be 90 degrees one day and snow the next. Hail the size of golf balls is not uncommon, and the almost-daily lightning storms that turn the skies bright indigo and illuminate the ever-present mammatus clouds are worth marveling at time after time. Whenever you think you’re ready to plant those tomato seedlings out in the garden, you’d best think twice and consider waiting at least another week or two—if you plant in May, they’re unlikely to survive whatever storm is brewing over the Rockies.
Eventually — months into the season we call spring, mere weeks before the summer solstice — springtime actually arrives (usually in the form of incredible quantities of neon sticky pollen, rich greenery where there was brown straw a week prior, and the vibrant orange, yellow, purple, and pink wildflowers that seem to blossom overnight).
But with the spring comes the cows.
And the cows — well…
The cows. are. assholes.
Perhaps my loathing is fueled in part by their large looming presence, or the whiplike tail constantly flittering in circles, indicating what I imagine is some semblance of discomfort or annoyance or an all-too-relateable existential dread. Or maybe it’s the flies that persistently buzz around their eyeballs and that incredibly hollow vacant look they shoot my way as I attempt to skirt past them on my morning trail runs (is it safer to speed up or slow down?1). The placement of their eyes on the sides of their heads — such that they can almost see 360 degrees around them (!) as they graze — no doubt also plays a role.
But what gets me the most is their penchant for standing and staring, blocking the trail, looming large in their unpredictable nature, both threatening and imposing, purposefully positioned in such a way that makes me question whether it’s safer to go around or turn around.
It’s the not-giving-a-fuck attitude — one that I wish I could muster myself when the perfectionism creeps back in, and when the social anxiety or anxious-avoidant attachment ruminations initiate the familiar spiral I thought a decade+ of therapy had enabled me to permanently leave behind.
Could it be that my disdain stems from jealousy of these assholes?
Unlikely. Because cows are also incredibly stupid [a side tangent].
You know that CAPTCHA exercise2 where you have to identify all the squares that have a bus, or bike, or stop sign, or whatever? And, as a human, you stare at that one square with the tiiiiiiiniest little sliver of one of the objects you’re supposed to identify to prove you’re not a robot — stumped — wondering if you’ll have to do this all over again if you select that square and knowing full well that if you don’t select it, you may still have to do it all over again anyway…
To prove we’re humans, we have to identify objects, toil over nuances, click buttons, and accept whatever consequence our ultimate decision about the sliver-square bestows. We are advanced.
But the cows?
This stupid fucking cattle guard keeps them from crossing over into other-cow-territory because they’re afraid of getting their legs caught in there.3 And out here in Boulder County, throughout much of the extensive trail system, these things exist on the trails/service roads, often sans any fencing around them. The cows could just walk around this perceived barrier, but they don’t.
Simple, simple creatures.
While these more recent cow experiences have perpetuated my bovine distaste, the formative experience that ignited my detestation was far less traumatic than Irena’s (whom you have to thank for this story being shared).4
In the mid-90s, my neighborhood in North County San Diego was surrounded by a small canyon (still there) and undulating green fields laden with thousands of cows (long gone). All that land is now a high school (which they were building when we moved in) and thousands of damn-near-identical — and now incredibly overpriced — homes. Somehow, we’re all better for it.
Because I learned to abhor those cows. Those. cows. were. assholes.
One evening (sometime around 1998), we were returning home from a performance at the Civic Theater when my mother turned onto the back road that would take us through the bucolic pastures, leading to our neighborhood. But a mere 200 feet in, we came to a screeching halt.
For there — in the middle of the road — were the cows.
Blocking both lanes of the road with their side-eyes and lumpy haunches. We sat in stunned silence, unsure of how to proceed. My mother honked. And honked, and honked, and not a single cow reacted. From my vantage point in the backseat, I knew that the best move was likely to turn around and take the longer route home.
But out of nowhere, in an off-roading vehicle, came a young blonde woman who looked like she was in the midst of filming a country music video — you know the look: Long blonde hair up in a semi-messy ponytail, impossibly thin (like: where were her organs?!), cute cowboy boots, jeans bedazzled with rhinestones around the back pockets, far too Southern Cowbelle to have ever actually spent a day on a ranch beyond the photoshoot/film set she must have just fled to come to our rescue.
Anyway, this woman showed up, probably because she heard my mother's frantic honking, which did not bother the cows one iota. She hopped out of her vehicle, took off her plaid flannel, and started swinging it around like a goddamn lasso. She whacked the ass of one of the cows — who grunted, made eye contact with me in the backseat5, and then proceeded to push through the crowd of his brethren to get to the other side of the road. It took (what felt like) at least 30 minutes, but she slapped those cows, one by one, until the road was clear. Then she wrapped that flannel around her waist, gave us a quick wave, and disappeared into the darkness of the canyon from whence she came.
I still think about that woman every now and then, especially when the cows are out grazing while I’m on the trails. The memory of that experience is incredibly vivid somehow (it was a formative experience, after all), but there’s also a real chance that my tiny child brain stored snippets of her image that have evolved over time (was she as hot as I remember?).
It’s impossible to know at this point, but what I do know is this: I can usually get past those CAPTCHAs in under three tries, and the cows can’t cross the grate. And, yeah, I’m working on cultivating the don’t-give-a-fuck attitude whenever appropriate. Maybe you should, too.
Also: please look at this cow being a total asshole.
Update (6/14/24, 11:35 am MT): it turns out Zander was withholding a series of photos. The above is actually the third shot.
The original photo was a sweet and adorable farm experience.
But then the cow began asserting its assholery. Ex-girlfriend turned around when she sensed something was apiss amiss.
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If you know, please tell me. I’ve had many close calls and I prefer to avoid future ones.
What’s the word I’m looking for here? Is it an exercise? Also, holy shit—in trying to figure out if exercise is the right word, I discovered that CAPTCHA is actually an acronym?! Why did I never question the capitalization of every letter here? [CAPTCHA= Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart]. Not gonna lie, seems like the cows maybe made that acronym because it really should be CAPTTTCHA, no?
According to my admittedly cursory Google search, cows have terrible depth perception, so the cattle guard — typically with a ditch dug out underneath — creates an illusion of danger. But cows are often fooled by cattle guards that are simply painted on a road, if they’re painted in such a way so as to create the illusion of a cattle guard.
Let it be known that upon sharing my mutual cow disdain/aversion, she encouraged me to share this with all of you. So thank her by subscribing and reading her story!
I think we made eye contact? Felt like it, at least. Entirely soulless and dementor-like. I shudder just thinking about it—not a pleasant texture, that memory.
The LOOMING. The almost 360-degree vision. The hollow vacant look. The not-giving-a-fuck + threatening + imposing vibe. ALL THE THINGS. Thank you for capturing the evil that is cows so perfectly. Also, the pictures at the end? Pure gold.
Proud of you for being so proficient with CAPTCHA testing! I am fully prepared to believe the cowgirl was as hot as you remember.