SUNDAY, APRIL 21
OUR EASTER SURPRISE
We were sitting at the table in the kitchen, morning sunshine pouring in the windows across the crazy plastic table cloth with colored mugs all over it, the cool, fresh air from outside drifting in through the open door in the entrance, both of us working on our computers, when Chloe said, “Oh, my!”
She was looking out the window. I followed her gaze.
There in the yard were 15 or more black and white cows, eating the grass and hedges, looking perfectly at home. Oh, my, is right! What do you do when you find a small herd of cows in the backyard?
Our reaction…run outside and take photos. Chloe asked how close she could get to them as she inched within six feet. At this point, they had moved to the back of the yard and surrounded the old, beat up trampoline, which they proceeded to pull apart, and eat! I wasn’t sure they were eating the trampoline but pieces of it were definitely in their mouths.
“He has a whole plant in his mouth!” exclaimed Chloe as one cow walked toward the trampoline to join his friends with a plant and its roots dangling from his wet lips.
Okay, we could just take photos, but maybe we had to do something.
I called the neighbor and he said he’d be right over. He and his small, black and white terrier, a good friend of Depp’s, arrived in about five minutes. He had two long sticks. “Help me get them out of here,” he said as he handed one to me, and ran behind them, moving from one side to another, trying to herd the not-most-intelligent animals on earth. Chloe said I stood there without doing anything, holding the stick out in front of me, looking dumbfounded, or dumb, as he yelled, waved his stick and herded them toward the driveway.
Are you just going to put them in the street? I asked, wondering if it mattered at all whose cows they were. “You have to get them out of here,” he said. “They will ruin the yard and garden.”
The cows ran out onto the street. A driver in a small red car had to wait for them. A woman was walking her dog down the same street. She yelled to our neighbor — they knew each other — and said she knew who the cows belonged to, and they were headed in the right direction. Off they went, up the road, that happy little herd. Dazed, Chloe and I stood at the end of the driveway.
The neighbor’s wife arrived just as the cows galloped around the bend. She told us it happens a lot. And we were feeling so special on our Easter Day.
I do believe that only three weeks ago we were in Milan…
