One of my very favorite things to do each day is appear beside my bunica in the front yard and join her in the short walk down the sometimes treacherous hill and around the corner to the bus stop. Each day, this is where various chosen members of households go to wait for the cows to come home from pasture. I know, I know... I've mentioned this before. But, I have a feeling that simply saying that I help "walk the cows home" doesn't fully paint the picture for you. Sure, on any given day this task is fairly uneventful (or as uneventful as you can imagine 15 cows walking in the middle of a well-loved country road to be), but lately we've had some excitement.
One night of particular craziness comes to mind, a Tuesday evening about three weeks ago. Mama Galia and I left our gate and began to walk down the hill. As most walks through my village, this isn't a straight shot from our starting point to our destination. We are bound to see neighbors working out in their yards doing anything from knocking down old walls to cracking walnuts as we pass, and there is always something to talk about before continuing down the hill. After making it to the bus stop and greeting the other cow-wrangling regulars, we sat and waited. Sometimes we wait for 5 minutes, sometimes it's more like 25 minutes. So this particular evening, the cows begin to come down the hill, one way ahead of the rest. She passes the bus stop but her owner isn't around yet. Before we can do anything, it goes into the field across from us, definitely not where she's supposed to be (usually they are very self sufficient and take the turn no problem). So a maybe a minute later, the man who belongs to the cow comes up the road and a few people let him know immediately that his cow has gone a bit rogue. Next thing we know, someone else's cow goes into a different field causing even more chaos. She has to come back the way she went in or else she'll be stuck in the field. As we're trying to figure out how to get her to come back to the street, another man is chasing after his cow who is headed back up the hill - the opposite direction she's supposed to be headed. This is all happening simultaneously while cars, busses, and big trucks are trying to drive down the road, quickly realizing the cows are staging a coup (or a "moo", amiright), quickly slamming on their brakes and then swerving in every possible direction to avoid the livestock. Once our cow, Aluna, made her way to us, and after we had succeeded in wrangling the second rogue cow, we followed Aluna back to our hill. It's worth mentioning the our cow is very well behaved and goes exactly where she's supposed to. Unfortunately, a white cow also followed us to our hill and my bunica instructed me to "stai aici" (stay here) and proceeded to chase the white cow back down the road to the main Street, arms flailing and yelling all the way. I can only imagine what the whole scene must've looked like from an aerial point of view, probably like a scene from a movie, but it brought me a massive bit of joy.
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