What Cattle Do At Night (or Until the Cows Come Home)

 

Another in a continuing series of articles about what exactly animals and marine life are up to, that you always wanted to know.

We’ve all seen it. About an hour before sunset the cows come home. If we’re talking milk cows, they head for the barn because there’s food there and a place to get out of the wind. But what about cattle on open grazing land? Where are they heading? How do they spend their nights?

First of all, we’ve all heard the expression “herd mentality” and when it comes to cattle, there are always some dominant animals that decide where and when the herd moves. They are after all prey animals, so there’s safety in numbers. So after a hard day of grazing, cattle will seek out some lowland out of the wind and elements and find bedground for the night. You would be surprised at how much body heat an 1,800 pound cow can generate and they do have a whole lot of insulation, so I would not get too hung on whether or not they are cold. Ask a rancher in North Dakota how low the temperature has to get before a cow freezes.

There’s usually a lot of gossip about who saw what (Did you see that rusty old pick-up truck go by?), how much forage everyone had, and some of the goofy things the calves were up to that day. There is a lot of talk about the quality of the forage, so much like humans, cattle will drone on and on about where the best forage was, or complaining about the scarcity, or how long it took to chew cud.

Cattle are very social, so it’s not unusual for some of the better storytellers to break out a story that’s been handed down for generations for the listening pleasure of the rest of the herd. On some rare occasions, the herd will come across some Jimson weed and on those nights the cattle have a riproaring time getting high as kites (perhaps not the best comparison when you’re talking about an 1,800 pound animal) and having some really wicked hallucinations. If you’re wondering what kind of hallucination a cow might have, one of the most common ones is that a cow will think that the ear tag is some kind of radio controller that’s following every move the cow makes. Creepy yes, but not out of the realm of possibility.

So the next time you see cattle making their move around sunset, you’ll have a pretty good idea that the party is about to get started.

Jay Harrison is a writer and creative consultant for DesignConcept. His mystery novel, Head Above Water, is available on Amazon and Kindle. You can also visit his author page here.

Miss Information?

Or should that be misinformation? I never had any expectation that baby boomers were a monolithic demographic when it came to their political and social opinions, but sometimes it felt that way when the war was raging in Viet Nam and Selective Service (remember that?) was breathing down the necks of young boomers. We are all in this together, right? Well, maybe not.

Fast forward 52 years, and it’s become even more clear that if there ever was any uniformity to our outlook as children of the 60s, it’s gone now. The truth has gotten fuzzier and facts can be challenged by alternative facts, the latter phrase itself a puzzling and disturbing development.

All this time, even though we watched the same TV shows, listened to the same hit songs, and fixated on the popular movies of our era, it appears that are brains were interpreting these cultural touchstones in very divergent ways. Truthiness became a thing and thus it became okay, if not acceptable, to decode shared experiences as opposing ends of the political spectrum.

The alphabet soup of generations (Gen X, Gen Y/Millennials and Gen Z) have been for the most part shaped by a whole different set of cultural and political influences. Their outlook has been influenced by recessions, rapid technology innovation and rampant social media. Now they are tasked not only with translating the latest operating system updates for our computers, but also helping us separate truth from fiction. With baby boomers grandparents caught between Q Anon and the Onion, what’s a Gen X, Y or Z’er to do? They expected, even welcomed the chance to help boomer parents with technology, but how could they have predicted they would be required as well to debunk fake news. One generation believes if they see it in print it must be true and the other generation finds almost everything that makes its way to the internet to be suspect.

Since we can’t agree on which facts are really facts (i.e. truth), we can only hope that X, Y and Z will save us by confirming the real ABC’s.

Jay Harrison is a writer and creative consultant for DesignConcept. His mystery novel, Head Above Water, is available on Amazon and Kindle. You can also visit his author page here.

 

Deep in Da Nile

Whadda you mean I’m not 58? I feel like I’m 58.

Yeah, about that. You’re just another baby boomer who thinks that they will live forever. But have you noticed that you are forgetting things more often? That thing where you go into another room but can’t remember why –– is that happening more often? Do you need the TV volume up higher than –– ahem –– some other people in the room? Is figuring out how to do stuff on your computer getting more and more difficult (i.e. requiring the services of random teenagers in order to figure out how to back up your old iTunes –– I know, Apple killed it and they call it Music now. How creative.). Do your knees feel sore after a long walk or a hike? Do I need to continue listing these things or are you getting the message?

You –– we –– are in denial. And the older we get, the more denial we exhibit. I’m not particularly worried about it. It’s normal as we age. I’m more worried about where it stops. This is why children take away the parent’s car keys. I don’t have any children. Does that mean people I don’t even know are going to tell me I should not be driving anymore? I know this day is far off (or is that just more denial?), but it’s never too early to start worrying about it.

Baby boomers just don’t think of themselves as “older adults.” And honestly, why should they? The definition of older adult has been “updefined.” The President is 78. The Speaker of the House is 79. Bernie Sanders is 79 and he’s a famous meme for crying out loud!

Of course, we are not the first generation of oldsters to face this problem. The difference is that we are baby boomers, and I don’t have to tell you, boomers have this group-think tendency to believe we are different than past generations. Not necessarily better, but different. Our culture has contributed to this effect as well. We are living longer and healthier lives. There are more medical and psychological means of deferring events that used to define old age.

So. What to do? Keeping paddling in the Nile? That’s where you will find me. Until or unless someone takes away my paddle.

Jay Harrison is a writer and creative consultant at DesignConcept. His mystery novel, Head Above Water, is available on Amazon and Kindle. You can also visit his author page here.