To the Eagle,

I was amused by the commentary here last week regarding how noisy dogs can get while chasing coyotes away from the herds of cows that range our island pastures.

I have a slightly different take on the noises in the country issue. I hardly notice the dogs anymore. The cows are making most of the racket!

Particularly around weaning season, the cow moms bellow all morning, all day and well into the night. I’m sure I hear distressed calf moooooos as a counterpoint, too. The distant howling, growling, booming, screaming and groanings I hear echoing throughout the night have me imagining what the jungles and veldts of the early Jurassic earth must have sounded like when all those dinosaurs emoted their lovelorn mating cries, territorial challenges, and tribal arguments.

I have often been awakened in the early dawn by the cacaphony of cow clamor close by. Upon peeking through the bedroom blinds I’m treated to the sight of a 10 cow chorus lined up shoulder to shoulder at the fence on our frontage, howling in the new day like a bunch of mismatched bovine roosters.

Ah well. It can get a little irritating, but mostly amusing, and sometimes a little melancholy. They are after all just cows and they’re going to have very brief lives. We are like gods to these critters. We arrange their conception, oversee and control the quality of their lives, and as a matter of business, schedule their deaths.

So sing us the song of your herd. Enjoy the sweet grass. Tempus fugit.

Grace Ling-Bouchard

Puget Island