LEAVE YOUR EMOTIONAL SUPPORT COW AT HOME
Any day now, somebody’s going to get busted for taking an emotional support cow on an airplane. Not a full-grown mama cow, mind you. Even in first class, no such animal could squeeze into the aisles. But a bottle calf, a few months old and needing regular feeding. Maybe 300 to 400 pounds. A gentle, tractable beast — less dangerous than some of the yappy little mutts silly people’s therapists persuade airlines to allow on board.
I came by this insight after the Great Cypress Creek Farm Cow Rebellion. See, my plan had been to submit all eight big girls to artificial insemination on the same day, greatly simplifying the breeding/calving process. To accomplish this goal, their estrus cycles needed to be synchronized. This involved herding everybody through a squeeze chute one by one and administering hormone shots, along with certain other indignities they mightily resented.
Come breeding day, all my cows were definitely cycling. There was lots of milling about, mooing and “riding,” as it’s called. With the A.I. man hiding discreetly in the barn, I took a bucket of feed and went to lure the herd into the corral.
Alas, herd boss Stella had evidently spotted the Big Branch Breeding Services truck and figured what was up. For the first time in our five-year relationship, she rebelled. She and the herd stood near the gate eyeing me suspiciously, as if to say, “No, we’re not going in there. You can keep that feed bucket. We ain’t that damn hungry. Do you think we’re stupid?”
Then Stella pivoted and led them all back across the big pasture into the woods. There would be no breeding that day. Time and money wasted. The man from Big Branch suggested maybe I needed to take his A.I. course, greatly simplifying things — but also requiring an extremely serious level of commitment, if you’ve never seen it done. It can be dangerous.
Cows themselves prefer bulls, as tiresome as bulls can be.
I mentioned that a friend had completed the course. He asked who.
“The most attractive 40-year-old mother in Faulkner County,” I said.
“Oh yeah, Jennifer,” he answered.
Yeah, Jennifer. One of the originals; a woman of such charm and determination that if she ever did feel the need to transport a calf via Southwest Airlines, the cabin attendants would sterilize and warm the two-quart feeding bottles for her, and passengers would gladly make way — except, of course, for that peevish neurotic with the peekapoo in 29A.
Jennifer performs artificial insemination on her cows herself, while husband Bryan lends moral support. Then she marks her calendar for nine months and seven days hence, and begins to stalk her pregnant heifers around the pasture with binoculars as their due dates get close. The woman is relentless and highly skilled. Comes premature labor or a breech birth, she knows exactly what to do. So yeah, she’s often got a bottle calf to feed in spring — if not her own, then one she’s adopted for a neighbor.
Nobody loves her livestock more than Jennifer. But no way would she actually take a calf on an airplane — nor any domestic animal, I’m confident, if for no other reason than the animals themselves would absolutely hate it. Service dogs are one thing. There’s nothing more admirable nor deserving of consideration than a guide dog or similarly trained support animal.
But no other kinds of animal need apply. Cats, for example, hate to travel. My beloved orange tabby, Albert — who’s so attached to me that he gave up hunting mice in the barn and moved indoors to watch ballgames with me for several weeks after I got hurt falling from a horse — hid in the box springs of our bed for three days after we moved.
My Great Pyrenees, Jesse, appears to think he’s the king boss dog of the world. He fears neither man nor beast. I’ve seen him pitch into two coyotes and send them limping; he once leaped on a cow that charged my wife, turning back the attack. (We’d accidentally come too near her calf.) But comes a thunderstorm, Jesse crawls into Diane’s lap for reassurance, all 120 pounds of him. The roar of jet engines would torture him.
Birds? Hamsters? Please. Domestic animals simply don’t belong on airplanes. Too much can go wrong. The airlines should put a stop to it. That “emotional support” dog that recently injured a 6-year-old child on a Southwest flight? A nervous wreck, and probably unaccustomed to children.
Sure, you can find some crank with a Ph.D. to certify that you require Boris or Fifi to remain calm, but it’s simply rubbish, and you know it. Selfish, too. You’re putting your own neurotic needs above your pets’ well being.
Grow up and leave them home.
You can email Arkansas Times columnist Gene Lyons at eugenelyons2@yahoo.com.