10 April 2010 Oh the Wonderful Things

We went on a walk today around Stanmer Park. In the US I would call it a hike, but they call them walks here, not sure why. Perhaps because it sounds more civilized, or perhaps because walking trails nearly always end or begin with a tea room or a pub. Very civilized indeed. Our walk took us in and around farm land marked for public access. Near the end we passed by a field of cows and I had a flashback to the bicycling trip AC and I did in Ireland in 2003.

AC can make a really authentic sounding moo.

I had forgotten this until today but it all came flooding back when we walked past the cows. Back in 03 as AC and I cycled past countless fields of cows he would moo to them and more often than not they would moo in return or come closer to inspect the strange sounding cow.

And that reminds me of one of Sam’s favorite books when she was a baby: “Oh the wonderful things Mr. Brown can do. He can go like a cow. He can go Moo Moo!”

Why can AC moo like a cow? It’s not like he grew up on a farm. I suspect it’s because he spent a good portion of his youth on long bicycle trips with his parents. They probably passed by a lot of cows and he got a lot of practice.

Today I was curious to see if he’s still got it.

He does.

Within minutes of warming up the moo vocals, several cows started drifting toward us. Sam loved this. She was mooing too, of course, but it was really her father’s tones that attracted the cows.

Sorry, not cows: calves.

We noticed a curious thing when the above group clustered around us at the fence: these were all male calves who had come to investigate. Moreover, it seemed to be a field of mothers and sons. We saw no female calves.

We went down along the fence a little ways and AC let out his siren moo again. Once again it was the boys who came trotting toward us. The mothers barely gave us a shake of the tail as they chewed their cud. “Oh, that. We’ve heard that one before.”

I have too, yet it still makes me laugh. Like the man himself can still make me laugh, even after all these years.