Sometimes, when I went to the stable, I would bring with me fresh greens that I had just picked and fed them to Frieda, the milk cow. I would pet her and talk to her. I could tell that she was pleased by the way her tail switched.
Once, I was out in the meadow hunting mushrooms. I was not content with finding ordinary champignons but was seeking the elusive and extraordinary Pfifferlinge and Steinpilze. Across the meadow was Frieda, munching away on the grass. Frieda spotted me and trotted over and walked alongside me as I was scanning the tall grass, looking for mushrooms. I was so absorbed that I totally forgot about her. Suddenly she sideswiped me so that I nearly fell over and looked back at me in annoyance. I wondered what was ailing this cow? I then realized that she had come over expecting to be petted and talked to and I was ignoring her. A lady can stand being ignored only for so long. I walked over and petted her, apologizing for ignoring her and telling her that she was the most wonderful cow in the world. Her tail switched like crazy.
I realized that Frieda's craving for affection was such that I would not be able to hunt mushrooms in this meadow in peace, and I soon left.
I like to think that somewhere in the Multiverse there may be a universe in which humans and other animals survive death and that Frieda stands in a meadow perpetually green with young clover. A place where there are no predators, bedbugs, Christians, fleas, Muslims, ticks and all the other things that make life so difficult.
Our naming customs were different and this applied also to farm animals, to the extent that they were named. Men and women had entirely different names. Names such as Joseph and Josephine, where the feminine version of the name was simply distinguished by a different ending, were virtually unknown. The idea of simply applying a feminine ending to names like Uwe, Jens, Herrmann, Thorwald, would simply boggle my mind.
