For any number of reasons, I would not like to be a cow. I may eat like a horse, sometimes I get a little antsy, and things may be going to the dogs in my life, but I draw the line when it comes to being linked to a cow.
The reason? Among many others, its diet.
You would think all I ever think about is food, based on last week's column on pizza. That's simply not true. I also think about sleep. Even then, when sleeping, as I am counting sheep, I'm always trying to butcher them for my next meal.
(Just as an aside for last week's work, I believe Adam and Eve ate Hawaiian pizza in the Garden of Eatin', er, Eden. Sin entered the world, and behold, there were black olives and yellow peppers.)
I'm thinking that a diet of the same food, day in and day out, without so much as ketchup to embellish, er, garnish it, is just too much. Mind you, it would give me license to say before every meal, “What the hay?” Instead of saying grace, I would be saying “grass.”
It's not only cows that have the same daily diet, either. Ever seen dog food? Cat food? Fish food? Ever eaten any of it? (I know, I know: What happens in the food dish stays in the food dish.)
While I may be fairly adventuresome with many things in life, I never (as in N-E-V-E-R) mess with what I order when going out for a meal. On the one hand, I don't want the same thing every time I go out for supper; but on the other hand, here are only about one of six dishes that I would order (beef dip, Monte Cristo sandwich, chicken burger, for starters). And pizza, natch.
However, as much as I like the same few dishes (Maurice, I not fussy, I'm discerning), I still enjoy a little variety. I couldn't handle, for example, beef dip for breakfast, lunch and supper, seven days a week, four weeks a month, and so on. Enough is enough...and then it's too much.
Whether you believe the divine side of the Good Book, I'm sure you will at least acknowledge the historical side. One of the greatest stories ever told was the wanderings through the wilderness for forty years by the freed Jewish slaves, as they made their way from Egypt back to the land that the LORD gave them, Palestine.
One of the many unique features about that account was--you guessed it—their diet. Without going into all the fascinating details, with all the spiritual subplots, suffice to say, they ate the same food day in and day out, month in and month out, for four decades! There were specific restrictions on when to get it, how to get it, and where to get it. (Read it at your leisure and pleasure in Exodus 16, the second book of the Old Testament.)
I tend to be hard on those Hebrew pilgrims, for all their ungratefulness, laziness, and complaining, but I think I would be just as bad, if I were, say, Ezra ben Solomon, son of Gilead and Machpelah. I mean, after all, manna in the morning, manna at noon, and manna in the evening would be just too much. Even if there could be manna loaves (or would that be 'bread bread'?), fried manna, manna chow mein, or manna meringue pie, at the end of the day, the base diet would still be manna.
So, let's get back to the cows. All they eat is grass in its natural state, or gift-wrapped (aka bales), with a little grain thrown in for good measure—kind of like a chocolate bar on the bovine menu. But at the end of the day, the base diet is still grass. They thrive on it, only because they are wired that way (a soft suggestion here, people, that there is a Grand Designer behind these things).
So cows can eat their grass, the Hebrews can eat their manna, but I'll stick with some beef dish. You might say that I'm going to have a cow over this matter, one way or the other.
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