Cows are dumb, or at least that’s what people tell me.
However, at this moment, nearly midnight on a hot summer night, I am having doubts. Three of our cows have escaped captivity, despite our conviction that the fences would hold them. They are new cows, not settled in. We chased them all day through dense forest and cornfields, in temperatures approaching 100 F with East Coast humidity. Weather that at this latitude—almost halfway between the equator and the North Pole—is probably influenced by climate change.
And this, during an election year with Donald Trump as the popular choice of the Republican Party, one of the most powerful political institutions in our civilization. So Trump has a chance to be President, the climate is menacing, and three of our cows are probably somewhere in a neighbor’s cornfield. And I’ve been tramping through a Lyme disease hot spot all day with a machete and a bucket of cow feed.
But tonight the three cows returned. They didn’t return to the pasture, but close, just outside the fence. So I am trying to coax them down a narrow road to the gate, using “cow candy”—feed laced with molasses. I tasted it and it was hardly sweet at all, but to cows it’s like a Halloween bag full of Butterfingers. So I am giving them a bit of cow candy, walking toward the gate for a few paces, then turning around and giving them a bit more. This works up to a point, but then the cows stop and slowly retreat uphill, away from the gate. They clearly want the candy, but something is bothering them. I go after them and feed them a bit more to retain their interest, and then start backing up toward the gate again.
We go through this three or four times, and finally I realize that it’s the darkness. It’s a moonlit night, a little hazy, and visibility is good in most of the pasture. But the gate area is shaded by big oaks and walnuts, and the fence adjoining the gate is also shaded. The cows follow me until they see they have to walk through relative darkness, and then they back off. Obviously a predator could be lurking. It doesn’t seem that dark to me, but I’m not worried about a hyena attack. Their night vision might be worse than ours, or there might be some other reason I haven’t thought of. I prefer the predator theory, but I can’t say for sure why the cows are behaving this way.
But whatever the reason, there’s no doubt it’s easier to lead people into darkness than it is cattle.
I suppose people are bound to fear predators less than cattle do; large land predators have mostly left us alone for the past 8,000 years. But what has replaced predation as a threat to our survival? Besides bacteria and viruses, it’s the lies we tell ourselves and each other, and anything else that clouds the mind.
And the more organized and socialized the lies are—like wolves and lions—the more dangerous they are. The cattle may believe that lions are waiting in silence for them to approach the gate, but what about me? What’s waiting for me? I could say: nationalism, narcissism, the loss of science.
But really it’s a coldness in our minds that looks at reality and decides to lie about it. That simple moment when Peter denies Christ and we deny the light of truth.
That’s what is waiting for me, in the woods beside the cattle gate. It’s consumed so many men and women, and it seems impossible that I might escape. But perhaps I can, perhaps I can.
We managed to get the cattle back in the pasture; we waited for hours until the moon was lower and the path and gate were clearly lit. Then, staggering with fatigue, we got the cattle back in the pasture using the cow candy. We only slept a few hours but we woke up with a splendid sense of well-being.
The Socialist Investor 
Just beautiful and timely, throughout. I’m hearing echoes of E.B. White’s essays in the lead up to and during WWll. We turn to the natural world to show us order and balance, as the human world reveals disorder and a loss of balance.
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