Pansy by Charles Hayes

Author:Charles Hayes [Hayes, Charles]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2012-06-25T22:24:01+00:00

Budding Genius

“Pansy, let’s go for a walk. Go get Nellie.” Mandy heard herself speaking aloud and looked around the barn lot to make sure no one but the cows could hear her. Imagine talking to a cow and being understood. Who was going to believe this, even if they saw it with their own eyes? Pansy trotted over to the entrance on the east side of the barn, opened the gate, and went in after her friend Nellie. Both came out on the run, and before any of the other cows could come out, Pansy pushed the gate shut and flipped the lever to lock.

Mandy watched, shaking her head. This too she would video, but she might need supporting evidence to keep people from thinking it wasn’t a trick or something. They left the barnyard and entered the woods near the creek that ran all the way through the forest, coming out near the trail to Kellogg Mountain.

About a half-mile into their walk, Pansy, who was out ahead of Nellie and Mandy, stopped abruptly. She stood still for a moment and then ran back to Mandy and nudged her forward, just like Lassie in a movie trying to show her owner something. As soon as she came to the place where Pansy had stopped, Mandy could see what had disturbed her. There, near the creek bank, were bear tracks, huge bear tracks, and they looked fresh. “Let’s go back girls,” she said.

As if she understood every word, Pansy ran in front of Nellie, turning her toward the barn. Mandy wasn’t sure if the goose bumps on her neck and arms were because a bear was so close by or because she was in the presence of perhaps one of the smartest cows on the planet. How could this be? And how could this cow not even look like the rest of the herd? Was she a genetic accident or a mutant? Or could it be that Pansy was not that uncommon? That people simply didn’t know much about cows because most cows were usually in herds and none of them ever got that much individual attention? “But what about dairy cattle?” she wondered. Each of them gets lots of attention, and surely some of them are smarter than average.

She remembered that one of Mom’s favorite cartoons was a Far Side strip showing several cows standing on their hind legs drinking cocktails when one cow yells “Car!” And in the next image, they’re all back on all fours, grazing. She hadn’t thought about it in years until now. What would her mother have had to say about Pansy? The ache of grief rose in her chest with the knowledge that she couldn’t tell her herself.

Some of the girls she knew in the area had terrible battles with their mothers, but that had not been the case with her and her mom. Maybe it had something to do with living so far from town. Or maybe it was just because they were both of compatible temperament that they hardly ever fought.

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