Mom, look what I brought you!

I have found a few things around the house which gave me a momentary shock. Finding some kind of animal in an unexpected place, like a frog in the toilet or a bat hanging from a door frame gives me a quick little jolt every now and then. There is a split second where every nerve becomes alert, then immediately back to normal when my brain processes that it’s only a bat, a frog, a big hairy spider or a snake. This morning we had come home from grocery shopping and the dogs were ecstatic to see us as usual. I decided to unlock the back door instead of the front, turned the corner to the back porch and got one of those little jolts I just described. Then I started laughing as Cesar came around the corner, concerned about what had made me emit that little involuntary shriek.

With three dogs around, it had to happen eventually - a little bit of the dead cow from next door made it to our house. For days, we had been finding what I thought were sheep hooves. I would hear the dogs snarling and play fighting like they do when they have a special toy and would inevitably find the fought over object to be a black hoof. With so many sheep about, I just assumed that maybe they shed hooves occasionally and the dogs were finding these little treasures in the field. Little did I know they had been visiting the dead cow and pulling off its hooves. But this time they got lucky and the lower leg came away with the hoof. I don’t think they really knew what to do with it, but they did bring their trophy home. So it turned up like some kind of sick mafia warning on our back porch.



Curious now about hooves, and the difference between cow and sheep feet – cloven, one, two, or three toes? I Googled “cow hooves” and was surprised to see that nine out of the first ten results were for mail order cow hooves. Who knew? And here we get them for free!