Divine Cow

I went to the Seattle Art Museum in December to see the exhibit of Egyptian artifacts. Naturally, what impressed me most were all the animal images and references to animal gods--some gods were half-animal and half-human. Women with snake-heads, men with the heads of jackals, cat gods, and bird goddesses all made me think about how much closer the Egyptians lived to the natural world than we do today.

And then I saw the stone cow goddess. She looked distinctly friendly, with a smile, half-lidded eyes, and forward-cocked ears. And I immediately thought: Jennie.

If there was one cow on the farm that I could have elevated to deity status, it would have been Jennie. She was an old, reddish-orange Guernsey cow with a white tummy. Her genealogy wasn't particularly distinguished and she wasn't beautiful, nor was she the type of cow that produced lots and lots of milk. In all of those respects she was about average. But it was the force of her character--her obvious status in the herd--that set her apart. She was also ageless.

It was hard to know exactly how old Jennie really was. She'd been around for so long, we had all lost count of how many years had gone by since she'd had her first calf. As she grew older, the hair around her muzzle darkened, and this gave her a look of toughness. But she wasn't mean and often enjoyed being petted--although she never came begging for it like many cows. She had a certain aloofness that you see in some animals which hints at a perfect, self-contained independence--a general indifference to all things human. She was cat-like.

But Jennie was also very much a part of the herd, which she seemed to rule by sheer virtue of experience. She was small, but the other cows always moved out of her way or made room for her at the feed stanchions. (Whenever one didn't--usually a younger cow, or one that was particularly dim--Jennie would dig in with her short, powerful legs, flex her strong shoulders, butt with her broad head, and send the other cow flying. Cows do fly. I've seen it. It would be safe to say that The Cow didn't jump over the Moon--Jennie pushed her.)

As cows age, their backs sag a little, their bellies protrude more, and they develop enormous wrinkles around their eyes (heavy folds of skin that make our wrinkles look miniscule by comparison). Jennie had enough of them to make her look like a bovine Buddha. I always got the impression that she couldn't be surprised, because she had already seen everything. And when the other cows would stampede from fright, Jennie would just jog along behind them, as if she were keeping an eye on the kids.

There was one annual stampede, however, where Jennie always took the lead. Every winter, the cows would spend several months living entirely in the barns while the lowland pastures languished under several inches of accumulated rainwater. For those few months, the pastures became wetlands and belonged to ducks, geese, rabbits, field mice, and other local wildlife. But come spring when the water receded, it was the cows' turn to stretch their legs, eat grass, and play. And Jennie was always the first one out of the barn.

Watching a hundred cows jog run a muddy lane, then burst into a green field, kick up their heels, and chase each other is a lot of fun to watch. But among all the chaos and fun, there was always serious business going on--and that's what Jennie and the other senior cows would be doing. Like bulls, they would stake out separate territories in the field, kneel down, and rub their heads in the grass until they dug up some of it. Then they would use their foreheads like scoops and toss the dirt high in the air until it covered their necks and shoulders. And if any other cows approached them while they were at it, it was prime time to fight. I think herd status was determined by how dirty each of the senior cows was at the end of the day; Jennie invariably beat them all, with dirt caked in her eye wrinkles, wadded on her shoulders and back, and forming haloes around her ears and nose. She would even have black snot--a sight that would make the other cows shudder for months afterward.

Each year Jennie had a calf. Like most cows, she must have had about a 50-50 ratio of male vs. female calves, so there must have been a lot of her daughters in the herd. It was hard to tell, though, because none of them ever looked like her or came close to having the same character. Jennie was unique, a real cow goddess. Every herd has one, and she was ours.

Jennie last roamed our farm over 15 years ago. It was comforting for me to see her immortalized in stone...and in the hoity-toity Seattle Art Museum, of all places.