Ol' McMuenchrath Has a Cow...

I don't think I'm cut out for this.

When my husband and I got married, we discussed everything a responsible couple should discuss about the future. We talked about our careers, we talked about whether we wanted a family and how big a family it would be, and we talked about where we wanted to live eventually. One subject that never came up, however, was livestock. We never had any sort of discussion about whether we would or would not own cows, chickens or goats. I realize now that every couple should have this discussion, unless they live in a high rise apartment in a large city, where owning livestock would be logistically impossible, not to mention highly stinky. Women and men should be required to sign some sort of livestock release form prior to getting their wedding license, or else they could find themselves in the situation I find myself in now, which is owning several animals I am woefully unequipped to take care of.

You see, I grew up in a family which was rather anti-pet. I petitioned unsuccessfully for years for a dog or a cat. Eventually, after much sniveling and whining, I was granted permission to get a gerbil, I presume to shut me up. I named my gerbil Sammy, and Sammy lived a happy but uneventful life scampering playfully around his cage, running on his little wheel and periodically escaping and causing my mother to leap to high places and shriek when he would unexpectedly scamper playfully through the family room.

My pet experience ended rather abruptly when I took his cage out to the garage to clean it, became distracted by something shiny (as most 10-year-olds do) and accidentally left it in the unheated garage overnight. In Alaska. Needless to say, Sammy made his way to the giant rodent-wheel in the sky, and when the ground thawed later that spring, I held a memorial service in the backyard.

Once I escaped from under the anti-pet thumb of my parents, I adopted a dog in college. I loved that dog. Rosie was my girl. We did everything together. I was so upset when I found out that my apartment in law school wouldn't allow pets, and I didn't know what to do, other than beg my parents to take my dog. It was a long shot, I knew. But, in a decision that still stuns me to this day, my parents decided to adopt Rosie. They then proceeded to turn into the most deranged people I have ever met. These people, the people who told my brother and I that they didn't want pets, that they HATED even the idea of having pets, began treating this dog like a spoiled grandchild. If they were going to get a hamburger, the dog needed a hamburger too. If they went to get ice cream, they had to get an ice cream cone for the dog too. I knew they had really gone off the deep end when they would make special trips out for hamburgers and ice cream for the dog and THEY DIDN'T GET ANYTHING FOR THEMSELVES.

So, my animal ownership experiences are limited at best, which is why it is extremely stunning that I now find myself in an ownership position of a menagerie of animals, and a backyard that looks like the Clampett's house before they struck oil and moved to Beverly Hills. At my husband's behest, we began collecting various livestock and chickens when we moved to the country. He never has any idea how to take care of the animals when we get them. We are always woefully unprepared to take care of them. He simply acquires first and asks questions later. This is why we wound up with two cows but no barn, water supply or any way to transport food to them. Standard operating procedure in our house, after getting a batch of animals, is for my husband to run around in a panic trying to come up with housing, food and a containment system for them. He then gleefully hops on a plane and leaves for a couple of weeks, thereby leaving me in charge of our ever-growing brood. It's quite the system.

This is how I wound up in charge of two cows that have demonstrated an amazing ability to pass, ghost-like, through fencing and disappear for a week and a half. They wandered all around our neighborhood, committing minor acts of bovine vandalism. I actually found myself having to call the sheriff's office and report a "Cow at Large." That was a phone call I never, in my wildest dreams, ever thought I would make.

I grew up in the city. I do not "wrangle" animals. Therefore, I was shocked to find myself and two of my very good and very, very forgiving friends roaming in a pasture, mooing and shaking a can of grain in a vain attempt to lure my escapee cows into a trailer. The cows, being much smarter than I give them credit for, realized that I was offering them grain under false pretenses and refused to cooperate. They just stood there, chewing their cud and silently mocking us.

All of this happened while my husband was in Hawaii. He had been gone no more than 24 hours. I'm adding this information to the file I'm keeping for when I have to enter therapy. Granted, he had a legitimate reason for being in Hawaii, and it was non-surfing related. That didn't make me feel any better, however.

The happy ending to this story is that I did indeed get my cows back, and after establishing how they got out (apparently cows can actually go UNDER fences, especially if the fence builder didn't actually attach the fencing to anything in his rush to hop a plane to tropical locales) I was able to mend the fence, re-contain the cows and restrain myself from filling my freezer with assorted steaks and 300 pounds of hamburger. My husband is now back on cow patrol, at least until he decides to fly off to Aruba or somewhere else where he doesn't have to worry about cow retrieval.

And I'm currently looking for a nice house in the city, where cow ownership is frowned upon.