My Hallucination was Mooing

Originally published at Am I the Only One Dancing?. Please leave any comments there.

from yankeegalscafe.com

Not last night, but the night before, I woke up in the middle of the night (like I often do), obsessively checked my email on my phone (really, I’m that obsessive), and tried to drift back off to sleep.

“Moooooooooo.”

(Huh?)

“Mooooooooooooooooooooo.”

I have a history of sleep disorders, such that I assumed I was hallucinating, and tried to go back to sleep.

“Moooooooooooo-oooooooooooooo”

(WTF????)

I shook Husband’s shoulder.  “Do you hear that?”

“I was sleeping.  Go back to sleep.”

“There’s a cow out there.”

“Go back to sleep.  There’s nothing out there.”

“MOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!”

“Honey, ‘Nothing’ just mooed again.”

(A side note here.  We live in Independence, MO, near the city center, but we have plenty of indigenous wildlife, including deer.)

He half opened one eye.  “It’s probably a doe calfing.”

I really, really wanted it to be true, because I couldn’t wrap my head around why there would be a cow wandering down the street.  It made more sense for it to be zombies, though, because that was an awfully deep voice for a doe.  (Hey, I told you I have a sleep disorder.  Zombies seem reasonable at two in the morning when something is mooing outside your semi-urban house).

Morning came, sunshiny and nice, and the whole issue slipped my mind until I happened to flip through and catch the evening news on KCTV-9.  Here’s a link to the story about the steer in my neighborhood.

A Black Angus Steer

To recap the story at the link:  Troy and Troi Hudson, who live more than ten miles from me, bought a new steer they named Bruno at about noon on Tuesday.  By 1:00 PM, Bruno had jumped the fence and was wandering down Truman Road (I live less than two miles from Truman’s family home and his Presidential museum.  There’s a lot of Truman around here).

Bruno went on his merry way for thirteen hours, with police and animal control and the Hudsons all trying desperately to capture him (although why you’d want to taser a distressed steer eludes me).

Finally, at 3:00 AM, shortly after he ran bellowing past my house, they cornered him and got him on the trailer.  The Hudsons sold him the next day and bought a (presumably) more docile heifer instead.

Poor Bruno.  I’m going to dedicate this tried and true video to him:

“Cows with Guns” by Dana Lyons, movie by Humans Are Teh Suk

Unfortunately, no one told Bruno that if he wanted to “run free with the buffalo”, he had to head south, to Lee’s Summit, rather than west. Poor steer. Where are the chickens in choppers when you need them?

 

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