Sounds ridiculous. A cow who doesn’t like milk? Not possible. Cows and milk go together like horse and carriage. You think cow, you think milk, like boat – water, pen – paper, meatball – spaghetti.
But what if some cows don’t like milk? A lactose intolerant one maybe? In some countries milk is unherd of. Not a thing.
This is the tail of one such cow, one who did not like milk. Maybe you think her name is Elsie. But it wasn’t. Her name was Cow Cow. Like blues piano player Cow Cow Davenport who wrote “Cow Cow Blues”. The “Cow Cow” in the title referred to a train’s cowcatcher.
Cowcatcher — now there’s an unfriendly concept if you’re a cow. And inaccurate as well. More of a pusher than a catcher. What’s that old saying “You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar”? Won’t catch many cows with a cow pusher. And what good ever came from a pusher? “Goddam the pusherman” as the song said.
Regardless of the misinformation the cow in this story was named Cow Cow. And while she did not like milk she was, consciously at least, unaware of the issues with her name.
Even as a calf she knew that she did not like milk. Although it was forced upon her, as is true of many youngsters, it always made her feel unwell, making it hard to properly chew her cud. She didn’t ever really like cud to begin with. Who would?
In fact she was lactose intolerant, she could not properly handle the stuff. But it was constantly fed to her. She came to think that having a bellyache was normal, poor thing.
Then one fine June day as she was grazing placidly in a field of fresh green grass a grizzled hobo walked by along the country lane with a bottle in his hand. This was no ordinary hobo. He was known among the hobo set as “Hoochie.” He was actually the disenchanted offspring of a deranged tech billionaire, hiding out among the ever growing hobo population. Hoochie was trying to escape from the billionaire life, which he found tiring, tedious, degrading and nastily competitive.
Hoochie in fact had a debilitating ailment — he was hypocrisy intolerant, it made him break out all over in horribly itchy welts for which there was no relief. And one thing about being wealthy, you can avoid almost anything but hypocrisy for which you need 150 trillion % immunity. There naturally is a new vaccine for hypocrisy but it is only 38% effective on months where there is no full moon, you need bi-monthly boosters and the side effects are ghastly (e.g., your ability to lie with a straight face can randomly stop working).
So Hoochie had taken to hanging out with the hobo crowd which was growing by leaps and bounds daily as his billionaire tech father and all his buddies were upgrading to trillionairehood in order to feel even better about themselves than they already did in the hope that their long dead daddies might finally notice how smart and special they were. Becoming trillionaires would not only ramp up the string of zeros in their bank accounts but would have the added benefit of crushing most of the population into near starvation. After all what’s the point of sitting on a pile without being surrounded by a sea of hungry people who will do anything for the faintest hint that you might, just might, flick a few flecks of dandruff off your head some day.
Although he was an aspiring hobo Hoochie never totally developed a taste for rot gut booze, growing up on Grande Cru orange juice and XO XO XO oatmeal. While the bottle he clutched look like $2.50 Flin Flon Homebrew Lighting it actually contained Louis XIII Rare Cask Cognac which sells for $78,500 at the liquor store. Pretty smooth stuff: a” centennial tierçon of eaux-de-vie with a richness and intensity never encountered before and an exceptional 43.8 degrees ABV.”
This morning in the warming sun Hoochie was plumb tuckered out after a night in a rattling cold boxcar. The soft warm green grass and humming buzzing bees suddenly overcame Hoochie and he slumpled down next to the fence and began dozing peacefully right by the grazing Cow Cow. She noticed the shiny bottle that lay next to Hoochie from which the Rare Cask Cognac was dripping into the grass and was intrigued. What was that smell?? Completely beyond her experience – “a uniquely exceptional aromatic profile, inimitable complexity. The emotional intensity and fascinating mahogany hues brought into light as a result of the combined forces of Time and Nature acting through an endless number of interwoven cycles.” Cow Cow felt transfigured as if a veil had dropped form her eyes. She felt almost calved again into a new world of possibilities. The attraction overwhelmed her, all sense of rationally and restraint fell away as she began licking the amber elixir as it dripped into the grass. She lifted the bottle from Hoochie’s hand and managed the spout into her mouth and, raising her head, let the all remaining golden liquid pour down the hatch in one ecstatic swallow.