Tipping Cows

One early evening about 15 years ago, I stood in front of an Arizona classroom enjoying a break in a two-hour archaeology class. I forget the thread of the conversation that preceded it, but at one point a student started talking about tipping cows in rural areas not far from his Chicago home.

Another student, obviously another city boy, listened in wide-eyed wonder. "Really?", he asked. "I've always heard those stories and wondered if they were true." I started to intervene, but remembered Dale Carnegie's warning of the price in lost friendship one may pay for winning an argument with a colleague.

I wanted to say, "Cows? We're going to talk about cows? I grew up with cows. I was raised on a dairy farm. I know something about cows! I milked cows every morning before school and every afternoon before supper. I have shoveled their manure and pitched their hay. I have sprayed their flies, washed their udders before milking, tended their wounds when they cut themselves on a barbed wire fence, reaching for the always-greener grass on the other side.

"I have led cows to the bull's pen when it was time for breeding. I have assisted young cows experiencing problems with the birth of their first calf. I have picked corn for them and stood for hours in attendance of a hammer mill, grinding the corn to make the feed that was their reward for standing patiently in their stalls during milking time.

"I have cared for cows and their calves in every imaginable way. As a small boy, I watched a young calf wander onto the frozen surface of a little pond. Before my mother or I could intervene, the ice broke and suddenly all that was seen of the calf was its nostrils and its panic filled eyes held above the icy water. We were unable to rescue the calf and by the time adult male help arrived, the animal was nearly frozen. It shivered so violently its whole body shook.

"My father carried the calf back to the barn where it was sheltered from the bitterly cold wind. He built a fire and heated bricks which we wrapped in burlap bags and stacked against the calf's body. He continued this far into the night, until he, too, was cold and exhausted.

"The next morning I ran to the barn to check on the calf. When I opened the door I was nearly bowled over by the escaping calf, as lively and frisky as ever.

Cows? Yes, I know somethng about cows, but apparently not everything. For example. I have never seen a cow sleeping while standing. Horses sleep standing up. Cows lie down to sleep. And, I have never seen a cow so sound asleep that you could sneak up on it. You can walk into a pasture full of cows in the middle of the night and every one of them will be alert and watching you... not with hostility, but rather with curiosity, trying to determine if you are hostile.

You cannot just walk over and scratch the back of a cow's head, either. If you walk up to a cow that is lying on the ground, it will immediately stand.

I wanted to say that "tipping cows" is the product of some cartoonist's imagination, and a subject for a bragging 19-year-old city boy. But, I was there to learn a little about archaeology, not to embarrass a fellow student. I said nothing.