My parents lived in Fredericksburg, Texas, out in the Hill Country north of Austin. They had found it somehow when my Dad was working as a geologist for Shell Oil. They bought some land out there with hopes of being able to live there after he retired.
I went out there to visit one time, and the wife came along with me for the trip. (This was before we got married). As I recall it was the only time I’ve sung “Ninety-Nine Bottles of Beer On The Wall” all the way down to completion of zero bottles having started at ninety-nine. We did this as a way to pass the time on the final leg the trip into Fredericksburg.
My parents didn’t live on the land they bought, but instead lived in town.
On one afternoon of our stay, the wife wanted to go see our plot of land. My Dad, she and I piled into the car and set off toward the land. Being in the country we passed a lot of open fields.
As we went past one field the wife was looking out the window and said “oh, look at the baby cows!”
I looked out the widow to see what she was so excited about.
“Uhm, those must be those new little mutant baby cows I’ve read so much about in the news recently.”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“Those aren’t cows. Those are goats.”
“I thought they were cows, just far away.”
It turns out that her vision was blurry since she didn’t have her glasses on. She saw a bunch of fuzzy blobs in the field, with horns, and thought they must be cows.
Ever since then, we’ve had this running joke about ‘little baby mutant cows’. It comes up often now that we’re living in Small Town America.
If you’re driving out in the rural parts of the United States, my Hordeling, be sure to keep an eye out for the baby mutant cows.
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