Essay 34 Old Brindle

Essay 34
OLD BRINDLE

When I was a boy we had a brindle-colored cow named, aptly, Old Brindle. I detested that ornery old cow.

Old Brindle had a talent for getting out! She would go into the barn and, refusing to go into her stall* the first time, she always forced the north barn door. Someone then had to chase her to the garage and drive her back to the barn. After this escapade, Old Brindle would go directly into her stall without further fuss.

On one occasion I arranged just outside the north barn door a wobbly structure, containing “a ton” of debris, such as concrete blocks and the like, so that, when Old Brindle made her escape through the barn door, the sky would fall on her. It did, and I enjoyed the ensuing spectacle a lot, but there was no discernible change in Old Brindle’s behavior. Shucks!

One day Uncle Mason, who had mounted a horn taken from a Greyhound bus on his Model A Ford, was driving north on the Zenith road when he encountered Old Brindle standing in the road. Because she was facing into the wind, away from his Model A, it is likely that Old Brindle was unaware of his presence. He drove up immediately behind her, and, expecting a surprise blast of that big bus horn would fun to watch, he honked the horn. Without otherwise moving, Old Brindle promptly kicked out one of his headlights! And stood there!

This event confirmed my belief that old cows had nervous systems that transmitted signals directly from their sensors to their muscles, by-passing brains. However, I suspect that Uncle Mason found some way to attract her attention before he went on home. One lesson learned was that people and vehicles may scatter when they heard that horn, but Old Brindle did not.

This historical event ultimately triggered a whole series of events, detailed in the following essay.
* Each cow had her own stall, and almost never attempted to go into another cow’s stall.