Yup, you read that right. And it wasn’t even my idea, I swear. The plan for National Cow Week originated here and I learned about it from Beth Revis’ blog (can you imagine if I’d missed National Cow Week? Inconceivable!).

The girls

For those that are new to The Writing Cave, I live on a dairy farm. I’ve always loved cows, even growing up in the city, and went to Iowa State University for Dairy Science (yeah, it’s a real thing). Did you know that cows have no upper teeth? They have a hard plate that the lower teeth grind the feed against. Did you know they can change direction faster than flipping a switch? (this trait usually shows up when you’re trying to corner them) Did you know they’re flexible enough to bend around and lick their tail? True story. I love cows.

But I also love books, and luckily my in-laws do too, so we have plenty of literary figures running around the farm: Jane Austen; Nancy Drew; Lara

Baby Serafina

from Dr. Zhivago; Boo and Scout from To Kill A Mockingbird; Lyra and Serafina from The Golden Compass; Emily Dickinson, Maya Angelou, and Edna St. Vincent Millay (the poet family). It’d be awesome to have triplet heifers and name them after the Brontës, other than that whole cow-giving-birth-to-triplets thing.

The eldest stateswoman of the herd is Mary, who turned sweet sixteen in January. Sixteen is old for a cow. Really old. So Mary figures she can do whatever she wants and takes anything I say as a mere suggestion. Especially when I try and shoo her out of the milking parlor when she’d rather just stay and eat. And so, in honor of this being a writing blog, my ode to Mary:

Mary, Mary, quite contrary,
Why do your feet not go?
They stay there in place,
While you stuff your face,
And I scream and holler F&*%ing go!
 

I’ve never really gotten that last line right, so I need some National Cow Week help from you lovely readers.

  • Option 1: we’re running out of poet names and Edna is due next month, so leave us some female poet name suggestions in the comments
  • Option 2: if you have suggestions for any type of literary name, please leave in the comments
  • Option 3: re-write my Mary ode to suck less :)

Have a great weekend everyone and cows rock!

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