Des Vaches Sauvages de Flaxweiler

Suzie’s friend Stacie lives with her husband, a Finn (she is a teacher, he is a translator for the EU), in a village northeast of Luxembourg. It is in the middle of an agricultural area, and there is a working (and wonderfully smelly) farm just at the end of their road. Their house is one of several on a new street, the encroachment of Luxembourgish suburbia into the countryside. It is set on the rise of a small knoll, overlooking a bucolic country scene.

It is a few minutes walk down the street to a dead-end at an enormous barn, where a path to the right takes you eventually out between two fenced-in area where cattle graze. These areas are bounded by fences that we presumed were electric, given that they consisted of three or four strands of narrow wire.

After our day in Luxembourg (which I’ll describe below), Suzie and I took a walk with our two boys and Stacie’s daughter, who is 6, along the path I described above. As we were headed between the two grazing areas, a group of about 25 cows came walking into the area to our right from a path opposite where we were. They eventually grazed and ambled their way closer to us.

I have a talent that I rarely share, perhaps a remnant of my Iowa youth. I can make a very realistic cow sound (aka a “moo”). (I do a pretty good goat also.) When the boys saw the cows slowing coming toward us, they asked me to do my moo. So I did. The result was hilarious … about 15 cow heads turned and looked at me all at once, with that dull cow-look that they have. The boys laughed hysterically, so I waited a bit and did it again … and got the same reaction. So I waited and did it again. It was stupid, I know, but they boys were enjoying it.

About the fourth time, however, I got a different reaction. The cows became agitated, and one or two cows started butting each other with their heads. These were big, big white cows, some with horns. The boys liked that reaction, too, so figuring what the heck, I let out my loudest and longest moo yet.

To our astonishment, this seemed to set one of the biggest, longest-horned cows into a bovine rage. It looked directly at us, and started bucking up and down, throwing its body into the air. Several times, I swear, the cow jumped so high that all of its hooves seemed to be off the ground at once. And it did so with a great deal of grace for an animal so large. After this display, it started running straight toward us, at an increasing gallop, followed by five or six others.

At this point we became extremely concerned. Running right at us was several tons of agitated cow, with the only thing between us and the several tons being three small wires strung between quite ordinary poles. Our amusement went to fear instantaneously. We realized that we could not outrun them; they were coming at us very quickly. We also realized that if they wanted to break through the “fence” (I’m hesitant to call it that, it was so flimsy), nothing would stop them. With a collective yell we all turned and ran as fast as we could. I ran so fast that I ran out of one of my shoes. Finally we looked back and realized that the cows apparently respected the three small wires, because they stopped right before touching them.

From relief of the bizarreness of it all, we were all laughing so hard we were crying. But the cow weirdness was not quite over. The remainder of the group, all 25 or so of them, all came up to the fence, and arranged themselves single-file on either side of the leader who had chased us away. They all stuck their cow-heads above the fence, and all looked at us, as if in one gaze. Then, suddenly, there was pushing and shoving among some of the cows … and in a flash the entire group turned, as one, and sprinted (yes, sprinted these cows did) the entire length of the pasture, all the way to the other side, sounding and looking like a herd of buffalo, the force of their steps transmitted to us through the ground.

We don’t know what was with these cows. Perhaps they had just been milked, or perhaps it was cow mating season. But if you are ever in Luxembourg, you may want to consider leaving the cows alone.