Livestock

This morning's sermon was about Jesus the Good Shepherd, and of course that meant that comparisons were drawn between sheep and people. I've heard similar sermons before...the ones that go into detail about the idiosyncrasies of sheep, etc., and I have to confess: my mind started wandering. I didn't tune out altogether. I just wandered.
When I was in elementary school, my family lived in a trailor house on some land we rented from our neighbors. They had a lot of sheep, and one cow, and our front yard was separated from the pasture by a flimsy wire fence with barbed wire across the top. Over the years we lived there, my mother came to the conclusion that when a pastor compares people to sheep, it's not a compliment. Sheep are DUMB. And most of the time they were incredibly dull to look at it. They stood around in big clumps and did nothing. My brother and I used to climb over the fence and run around just to stir them up. We thought they needed exercise.
Then there was the cow. Her name was Baby, and she was a big brown cow. She was pretty dull, too, but every now and then she managed to cause some excitement. I remember one night I was in bed and heard something outside my window. I looked out, and there was Baby looking right back at me, her face as close to the window as mine. There were several repeat performances over the years. As often as that cow managed to get loose, they should have named her Houdini.
We lived there until I was 11, when we moved to the house where my parents still live, in a neighborhood that is more suburbia than country. And while I'm definitely a city girl now, there's still a little country girl in me, and I think that some day I'd like to live in the country again. Although, I don't want to own livestock. No matter how often it happens, you never quite grow accustomed to opening your window and finding yourself eye to eye with a big cow.