Moo

Last week, Puff and I had an encounter with a giant, mutant cow.

And not the same kind of encounter we had with the Prancing Armadillo. THANK GOD. Could you imagine if there was a giant, mutant cow under my house?!?! Talk about nightmares!!!

No, it was a different kind of encounter. But no less frightening. Or funny. Depending who you ask. Anyway... the back story is that there is a local zoo/animal rehab park thingie that does a light display every Christmas. Puff and I have been talking about going for the past 2 years, but life always threw a wrench in our plans... weather, travel, work, traffic, etc. So last Thursday night, we finally were able to pile into my SUV and drive the 40 minutes it took to get there.

And it was awesome. Not a lot of cars in the place, fun music, and cute light displays like camel lights and a giant ark. It was all fine and dandy. Until the animal encounter. Yes, a drive-thru animal encounter. Complete with the opportunity to purchase $6 worth of stale bagels to throw at free-roaming animals. I had seen the pictures. I knew it was coming. Except I had been desperately hoping it was voluntary and not a mandatory part of the package. I was adamant that Puff was not allowed to feed animals in my car. But I caved to his big sappy, sad eyes. At least it wasn't my $6.

We pull into the large pen. Then, chaos. There is no rhyme or reason to the traffic flow. People are driving around with no lights. In circles. Literally chasing small herds of deer that are barely as tall as my tire. All the while, Puff is driving my car so I can take photos. I never let anyone drive my car. My heart was beating out of my chest. Oh, there's a zebra. Except there are 50 cars in line around to feed it. Then I see it. The biggest animal of its kind I have ever seen. For a minute, I thought it was on stilts. But nope, that's just a big ass black & white cow THAT IS TALLER THAN MY SUV.

Oh, and of course Puff has to drive right up next to it! At first, it's not paying us much attention. I try to get a picture of its head out the window, but my camera settings weren't liking the lack of light, and with the flash, I was only getting pics of Puff's arm. Then it happened. Puff taunted the giant, mutant cow with a whole grain bagel. And its head turned. And I tried to snap a picture of Puff feeding the thing, but its head kept getting closer. And closer. And before I knew it, I thought I was going to have to jump out the side door and run for my life. That head was as big as my torso and it was coming into my window, trying to get the bag of food in Puff's lap. Which meant there was slobber. GIANT, MUTANT COW SLOBBER! And it was heading for the inside of my car!

I'm not quite sure if it was my scream or the flash of the camera that finally went off, or if Puff finally gave up some of his bread stash, but the monstrous animal finally backed its head out enough for me to momentarily stop panicking long enough to make Puff drive forward. Thankfully, if there had been any cow slobber, it landed on Puff's arm and not my car. Don't worry, at the end, there was a place where you could get out and feed goats, camels, llamas, longhorns, bison, and any other random animal you could think of. And they all slobbered on my husband.

I feel pretty confident that people thought I was being murdered when he went to put my arm around me. That boy has never seen so much hand sanitizer in his LIFE! And the entire time I kept praying that when we do finally get around to having children, that I'm really praying we have super prissy girls who want nothing to do with farm animals. Somehow, my life would seem a lot cleaner that way.