The Broon Coo (and other cow blather)

Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt: “oo.” Find a word with “oo” in it or just use “oo” because why not?

---

When my granddaughter was littler (she’s now a big 4 years old), I wasn’t working full-time and would go babysit once a week. So. Much. Fun.

Anyhoo — she was just a wee little thing, and I would put on music to play in the background while we played. I had a whole playlist for her.

I pulled it up the other day because I (obviously) hadn’t played it in a long time. It was a lot of Scottish songs. My granddaughter loved Ally Bally Bee and “danced” to it — which involved running around the couch.

I loved The Broon Coo, a song about a mischievous cow that breaks oot and eats all the hay and neaps (turnips) and chases the ducks.

Cows are near and dear to my heart. The cow population is our area has significantly declined over the 50+ years since my parents bought the house I am now living in. When we first moved here, though, there was a working dairy farm next door.

I wrote a poem about it some years ago and thought that I had posted it. Maybe I had and then took it down. Who knows? It happened to be in my overfull WordPress draft folder and I’ll put it at the bottom of this post. It’s not really stream-of-consciousness, you know.

If you’ve ever experienced feeding a cow something from your hand, you’ll know that it’s an unforgettable thing. The smoothness of their nose. The tongue pulling whatever it is off your hand. The slow patient chewing that ensues.

So many people are just in a hurry when they eat. They could learn a lesson from cows.

A horse’s muzzle is dry and it will use its lips to take whatever you’re holding. A cow’s nose is slimy — but in the best of ways, if there can be a best of ways for slime.

I used to walk down the road and play music for the cows. They would walk alongside me on their side of the fence.

Then there was the year the cows stampeded up our road when the guy was trying to load them in a truck. He eventually rounded them all up, save one — and there were feral cow sightings over the winter that year as it wandered the back hills. I don’t know whatever happened to it.

But the Broon Coo song is about a cow that breaks out and gets into trouble — which is what my poem is also about (kind of) except our cow was a black-and-white Holstein.

So I’ll leave you here with a few cow pictures and a poem. 🙂

---

When my parents bought the farm
(literally)
Pa Jackson was over the hill
(euphemistically and literally)

He milked the cows by hand
While the barn cats tumbled in the hay
(euphemistically and literally)
I watched with wide eyes
(the milking, not the euphemistic tumbling)

The Jacksons had a bull
To do the job of the artificial inseminator
And when our pet heifer,
Sock-it-to-me-Sunshine,
Wandered over
To visit the Jacksons’ cows
The bull also got to know her
(euphemistically)

Then, our heifer
Was in the family way
(euphemistically)
She was loaded on a truck
And sent to a home
For unwed cows

The next summer
The Jackson’s cows
Were also loaded onto trucks
And sent to auction
Because Pa Jackson was
Extremely
Over the hill
(euphemistically)

A few years later
We read in the newspaper
That he had bought the farm.
(euphemistically)