Once they’ve seen the big city, how ya gonna keep ‘em down on the farm?
There was a cow roaming around Pershing Square. It wasn’t there for any reason. It was just hanging out. You can’t see them, but behind my car are the cops. The cow cops. Coming to take it away, or give it a ticket, or something. The closest dairy farm in Altadena is some 30 miles away. Someone - or some thing - perhaps some cosmic loophole - had seemingly very recently just left it standing there.
It looked so normal just standing there on the corner of 6th and Olive, looking for all the world like it was waiting for the light to change. It didn’t seem out of place. People just seemed to walk around it while talking on their cell phones. A homeless guy wheeled his cart around it without giving it a second look. While I was taking the picture I noticed a kid and his Dad (The kid is in a red shirt, next to the cow). The kid pointed at it while his Dad kept walking, dragging the boy, who seemed transfixed on the cow on the sidewalk.
It wasn’t that the Dad or the homeless man, or the people talking on their cell phones didn’t see it. It’s a huge animal. I just noticed that other than the cops, the child and myself, nobody else seemed to care.
This is why I don’t miss living in El Lay. Not cows — got nothing against ruminants in general, or bovines in particular — but the general cluelessness.
