till the cows come home

Cows in Georgia have it made.  Sure, some of them end up in khinkali and the rest are saddled with the burden of constant milk production, but most of the time they get to lead what appears to be a fairly charmed life.  They graze in idyllic mountain pastures. They drink from rivers. They walk in the middle of highways. Basically they get to wander where they please.  Sure, if they get too close to a place they aren’t supposed to be someone swats them with a stick, but there aren’t really that many places they can’t be.  Cars swerve around them on the highways. People step around their dung piles on the roads and sidewalks. We mostly work around the cows.

So my family in the village had three cows, but I didn’t even realize that until about four weeks into my stay.  Cows are hard to miss, I know, but it turns out our cow barn was separate from the house.  So I finally discovered that we had these cows one evening when they followed me home.  I was just walking along the road when the trio started tailing me.  At first I ignored these strange cows because I assumed it was just a coincidence that we were headed in the same direction.  But soon I noticed that when I made a right, so did they.  And when I turned a corner they turned, too.  Getting nervous I picked up my pace and made it into my gate, which I quickly closed behind me. And there, stopped in front of that gate, staring back at me through the slats, were those damn cows.  What could they possibly want?! (I invite you to imagine how unsettling this all was for me in the moment.) So after collecting myself a bit, I went to show my host mom the weird cows outside the gate. Surely she would be concerned, too. I mean, who wants crazy, possibly mad, cows hanging around their house? I figured she would get a stick and chase them away. Imagine my shock and surprise when she responded to my gestures and broken Georgian by bringing out a bucket of kitchen scraps and feeding them. It was then that I realized they were HER cows and it was snack time. How I missed this daily ritual for four weeks, I have no idea. Let’s just say that sometimes the details in life escape me.

I’m pretty sure that every PCV in Georgia with a blog has a compulsory post about cows; it’s hard not to comment on them since they are such a part of the scenery here. But please, allow me to make one more unoriginal observation. Maybe everyone else knows this, but it was a surprise to me:  much like dogs and cats, cows seem to know where they live and can find their way home every night.  In my village they would set out in the morning to do their cow thing (eat and poo) and be left largely unattended throughout the day.  Then at night, around 7pm or so, they would make their way home. From what I observed, no one really led them, they just came home.  Maybe they wander back every night for those delicious kitchen scraps.  Or more likely they want (NEED) to be milked. But either way, they seem to know when it’s quittin’ time. This nightly parade was one of the most wonderful things about living in the village. If we were playing outside with the kids or sitting on a balcony sipping coffee, we would see all those cows slowing making their way home. And it wasn’t just the site of them. They had their own little chorus of moos and ringing bells. For a city mouse like me, this was amazing. Now that I’m in a bigger town I don’t have cows anymore or get to see them file home at night, but I don’t have to go far outside of the city to catch a glimpse. I’m sure I will have the chance to meet many more interesting cows during the next two years.  

Irma the Cow says, "I smell something good in there!"