The Cow’s Tail

I started milking the cows at an early age.  I can still remember being too young to milk but old enough to be with Grandpa while he milked.  I enjoyed watching the cats that would come to the stable and wait for him to squirt milk into their mouths.  He always had an attentive audience when he milked.  He started me milking a little at a time.  Being young and wanting to be like him I was eager to learn and participate.  Little did I then know how quickly milking would become tedious.  As I got older I was able to do more of the milking.  Beyond becoming acquainted with the monotonous and relentless nature of needing to milk, I learned a very painful lesson.  The cows would spend the day in the pasture grazing.  I rode my horse to take them there in the morning after the milking and then get them in the evening so we could milk again.  It was while they spent their day in the pasture that the trouble began.  While grazing, they would walk through patches of cockle burrs.  These burrs were small but hard and prickly.  They would become attached to the cow’s tail and could accumulate in large enough quantities to make it almost mace-like.  As you can imagine, the milking stable was filled with animals and their byproducts so in the summer flies were a constant irritant, not only to us, but also to the cows.  Their preferred methods of ridding themselves of the pests was to shake their heads and swat their tails.  Without the added weight of the cockle burrs, a swinging tail was of no concern to me.  But a cow’s tail full of cockle burrs became a weapon of pain to anyone milking the cow.  It certainly scattered the flies but the milker became collateral damage.  More times than I care to recollect, my senses dulled by the monotonous nature of my task, I was abruptly awakened by a thunderous whack to the side of my head.  It would always sting and even occasionally draw blood.  It was never pleasant.  Even after the first time it happened and I knew it could happen again at any moment, I would forget and become less alert. I should have learned from watching Grandpa get whacked but I didn’t.  Even after being subjected to my own pain, I failed to always keep one eye on that burr-filled cow’s tail.   I’ve found life to be a lot like milking a cow with burrs in her tail.  Getting wacked by something unpleasant and unexpected is a certainty.  While we cannot anticipate every possibility, many things in my life could have been prevented, or at least mitigated by a greater awareness of my surroundings.