Misfortune can strike a cow out of the blue. To give but one example, the field in which it is standing may become flooded after heavy rainfall or, if not flooded exactly, then pitted with many, many puddles. No cow likes to stand in water, so such a circumstance must be counted a misfortune.
The cow in the puddle, however, is une jolie vache compared to the cow which inattentively wanders onto some railway tracks and then comes to a halt. Continuing across the tracks would be the wiser option, for as long as the cow remains where it is, it is an imperilled cow. But unlike owls, cows are not noted for wisdom. The imperilled cow on the railway tracks may suffer the misfortune of being killed by a runaway locomotive without a cow-conscious driver at the helm. I am not sure ‘helm’ is the correct word for the little cabin in which a train driver, cow-conscious or otherwise, sits or stands, but let that pass. What we can say with certainty is that a motionless cow in the path of a runaway train will suffer the greatest of misfortunes, that is, a violent death. By comparison, the previous cow, the one standing in the puddle, is almost as happy a cow as the laughing one that mysteriously appears on the wrappers of a brand of processed cheese triangles in this country, and perhaps in other countries too.
- A Series of Unfortunate Cows
- The Gnawed and the Chewed
- The Glove of Ib
- Stunned Starlings ( Stalin and Old Halob )
- Three Tales of the Uncanny (by Dobson)
- An extract from Blodgett’s Book of Animal Sacrifice
This episode was originaly recorded on January 25th 2006. For a complete transcript of this episode, please refer to Frank Key’s Hooting Yard Website.
