August 12, 2007
Cowches
Very cute - a plush pillow in the shape of a real sized cow. Cuddle up on the floor. From Helga's Cowches:Cows and Cowches
by Helga Tacreiter
I LOVE COWS. Big, beautiful, breathing cows. I grew to love them when I worked on farms, milking and feeding these peaceful creatures and getting to know their distinct individual personalities. My heart broke each time one of my friends was sent to slaughter, which is the sad reality of farm life. But what could I do? I made their lives as decent as possible while they were in my care, then I had to kiss them goodbye.
Until the storm: a huge spring storm that lasted most of the night, with roaring thunder and lightning bolts hurtling down with deafening cracks.
In the morning, when I went out to feed the cows, I found them beneath a split and blackened tree, all dead. Six little calves huddled together a few feet away. As I led the orphans back to the barn, something inside me changed. The years of accepting sad reality were over. If these little guys had survived an act of God as powerful as that storm, they sure weren't going to be killed by an act of man, not if I could help it!
That's how the cow sanctuary began.
Trouble was, I wasn't a rich heiress. I was a farm worker making minimum wage. These calves weren't even mine. They belonged to the man who owned the farm. How was I going to save the calves?
I exchanged six months' wages for the lives of those calves. Never was money better spent, I thought as I hugged them. But what next? They were growing fast and would soon weigh at least half a ton each. No matter how hard I worked, farm wages weren't going to be enough to feed them. "How? How? How?" filled my thoughts.
The answer came to me as I lay in the straw snuggling with my cow family: I'd make life-size stuffed cows for others to snuggle the way I snuggled with my real cows.
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