Evening star., 1948-09-04
This and That
BIZ Charles Z. Tracs,peH

nth STREET.
Dear Sir:
my wife and enjoy your enlightening dis
QUESTIONS on birds, mice and other natural
phenomena.
Il wonder whether some time you could not
enable us to distinguish wren from robin,
sparrow from thrush, ETC.
Bred on the deep side of New York, did
not see cow except through pictures until I
was past is.
"Hailing you as teacher and friend,
II am, faithfully, H. F."
Il II
Mr.. F. has nothing on the writer here.
We have not seen COW since the age OF 16
years.
City life has its disquieting aspects.
Going along in trains and cars, one naturally
sees cows in meadows, but they, like lambs In
meadows, do not seem exactly real.
Watching the lambs Is more fascinating than
looking at cows. Cows are such large, disquiet-
ing brutes, they do not seem to blend as well
with the landscape,
Yet one must give them their due as wonder
full, faithful creatures. .-'
One of our experiences with cows was as .
lad of 10, down at Ocean City, Md, in the days
before the ocean had cut the beach back 50
badly that piles were necessary to keep 1t in
place.
In the old days that seaside town was per-
feet paradise for children
They could roam at will with nothing but
sand, sea and sunshine all around them.
There were thousands Of sand crabs, called
fiddler crabs. with their many long legs and
eyes sticking up on stalks.
If you were not too finicky, you could tear
OH leg or an eye and no harm done.
The creatures just grew new ones.
There were cows on the beach, but away up,
far past the halfway house:
The cows belonged to some one, but no one
seemed to know who.
What the poor things ate was a mystery
There was nothing in their line except some
tough dune grass.
Evidently they ate that-and liked it,
But when they came down the hard -trodden
portion of the beach a dozen abreast, they
presented tearsome sight to a boy who had
not had any experience with cows.
How large they seemed!
The fear of meeting the herd of cows may
have had something to do with the fact that
thereafter one did not find it necessary to
make any more long tricks up the beach.
meadow, we came face to face with cows.
Perhaps it would be more factual to say the
cows came face to face with us.
Reading book in a meadow with ones
back propped against large oak, and q small
stream at ones feet, may seem an idyllic
experience, retrospect, DuL AT CNe Lln1e II
was far from it.
We looked up, suddenly, and found ourselves
surrounded by about 30 cows
few of them were drinking, but most Of
them were looking.
They just stood there, their heads lowered, in
typical COW fashion, giving us the famous
once over
We thought If We said nothing. and did
nothing they would go away.
After all, there must have been many tons
of COW, there, all pointed in our direction.
Why didn't the silly things attend to their
business of drinking, instead Of standing In a
ring around our tree?
Why, indeed?
They liked to stand around trees and gaze
ut a strange creature with q book. evidently.
That was all there was to It, When they got
enough looking they all went away. followed
by the swift retreat from the meadow Of one
determined reader.
Thereafter, We read in many places, but all
other readers can feel certain that Q meadow.
equipped with cows, was not among them.