“For every beast of the forest is Mine, and the cattle on a thousand hills.”
Psalm 50:10
Henry David Thoreau, Walden
The drive across southern Nevada is not renowned for its scenery. Northern Nevada is considerably better: up past Vegas, the endless dry dirt and tumbleweeds begin to fade into long grass and rolling hills, set against far-off mountains with the snow still shining on their peaks.
And, gradually, the cattle appear.
Most of them are black, burned that way, perhaps, by the relentless prairie sun. Here and there, you see a cow with its calf, both sticking close to a small herd of others, nosing the ground and taste-testing their particular clumps of grass. A few trudge over that way together; a few others hunker in the shade of a lone tree.
I wonder if there’s any difference to the flavor of one patch of grass over another. Or is the draw of some particular stretch of pasture just its ambiance … a better view of the highway, a cooler breeze to sniff out for any coming coyotes?
Always – always – there’s one cow that has ventured farther out … sometimes, a considerable distance from the other bovines. I often wonder, hurtling by, a few hundred yards away, what draws this one so far off by himself.
Is it the sensitivity of his taste buds and stomach compartments? Is that thick patch over by the old elm like a great French bistro, whose marvelous cuisine only he has sampled? Is that spicy stuff over by the southeast fencepost his equivalent of Thai food?
Smock, if you will, but which of us truly knows how the world looks, and tastes, to a cow? How dull or discriminating their palates may be? Zoologists may be able to suggest how much their brains are capable of – how much, for that matter, any particular animal’s brains are capable of – but how do we really know?
If humans only use 10 percent of their brains, and cows use 90 percent of theirs … what profundities might that lonely bull be musing on, working his cud as the sun slides down and the shimmering cars fly by? And why does he want to be by himself, to think them?
How much do animals really know? What drummer, so to speak, is each of them listening to?
We paused in our own recent Nevadan excursion to rest for the night. Our dog, Archie, does not enjoy long car rides. They put those little markers down the middle of the road, the whole route from Phoenix to Boise, and somehow our changing of lanes – th-BUMP, th-BUMP – always coincides perfectly with his laying down, at long last, to rest in that blind spot we call a backseat.
So he jumps back up, weary but wary, to see what’s amiss. It takes a long time for him to decide that the mysterious threat, whatever it is, has passed. Finally, caution gives way to exhaustion, and he starts sagging back on the seat, but – th-BUMP, th-Bump – and the mystery monster has him up on his feet again.
He was as glad as we were to call it a night, and watched patiently as we unloaded our bags at the hotel. We knew he was hungry, and were searching out his food amid the other belongings when he brought out that odd combination of whimper and growl he saves for when he really wants something.
“Wait, Archie.”
“Grr … ooee … rruph. Grr … ooee … ruph.”
“Archie – wait!” my wife said, turning to re-enforce the directive. She found him staring at the water bottle she’d just set on the bedside table.
She picked up the bottle and emptied it into his bowl. He drank it like he’d walked all the way from Phoenix.
This is not a trick we’ve been working on. But then, Archie likes to think for himself.
I watched a documentary on dogs once. The scientists profiled wondered how so many dogs seem to know what time their masters will come home. They decided that a dog figures it out by how long the smells of his master linger in the air. When a given fragrance or pheromone evaporates to a certain point, the dog senses it’s “that time.”
It’s a marvelous theory, and makes a lot of sense. But, on the other hand … what if the dog just looks at the clock?
Or, listens to it. My wife and I have been marveling, as we often do, at her parents’ grandfather clock. It stands outside their guest room, and has a lovely chime that kicks in every quarter of an hour, followed by deep, solemn tones that mark the hour itself. What bemuses us is when we hear the chimes and tones – and when we don’t.
Sometimes, the music comes to us deep in our sleep; other times, we’re oblivious to it while sitting but a few feet away. Curious, that … you might assume the clock isn’t working, just because what it’s saying isn’t getting through on your wavelength-of-the-moment.
Or, for that matter, that a dog can’t tell time, just because he doesn’t wear a watch.
Wondering, more and more, if it’s this way with the animals. If they really don’t fathom and follow all that we do – or a lot that we do – or if the level at which they’re receiving (and communicating) information is just somehow markedly different from ours.
Or, maybe it’s actually the exact same frequency. Perhaps, unlike people, they simply have the grace not to tell everything they see and know and feel.
Paul Simon enjoyed a big hit way back in 1972 with his song, “Mother And Child Reunion.” Said he took the title from a menu item he saw in a Chinese restaurant; the dish was chicken and eggs.
I thought of that, watching the lone cows, in their passing meadows. Does a cow nurture any instinct, when the rancher or farmer swings ‘round to fetch it, of whether it’s being taken back for milk, or meat? Or both – a beefier kind of cow / calf reunion?
Is any cow ready, when the horse nudges, or the lasso falls, or the cattle prod prods, to move on to its fate? Or were there so many green and rolling fields still left to graze … pastures and prairies it had hoped to explore, some still-coming summer’s day?
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