Unexpected Visitors
By Sister Cecelia
On a Friday evening as we were finishing the meal, I exclaimed, “There’s a cow!” pointing to the outside patio area. Sure enough, a string of cows was trotting past the fence and were heading up toward the upper fields. Through the kitchen windows we could see them following the paths we’ve made for walking our dogs. Would they keep going and get home?
As we were finishing the dishes it was Sr. Patricia’s turn to exclaim, “They are out front now!” One cow was licking the dining room window—which had just been cleaned the day before. What to do? Who to call? Since we didn’t know whether they belonged to the farmer on Ashgrove south of us or to the person who had recently put their cows in the pasture north of us, we called the local sheriff’s office. They assured us they would send someone to look into it.
In the meantime, the cows—we counted around 11 of them—having circled our entire monastery, were heading toward the driveway. We went out the front door and saw that several of the cows were repeating their first excursion and were heading up to the upper fields again. The others saw us and decided to investigate us. They were obviously used to humans and were quite friendly. Initially we retreated back inside and hoped they wouldn’t come up the front stairs. Instead, they discovered the flowers and grasses on both sides of the stairs.
Three of us went back outside to see if we could shoo them back down the road. They were not afraid and began licking the gravel on the road, perhaps attracted by the salt left from winter? Only two larger cows had ear tags to identify them, and they were obviously the ringleaders. We supposed they were the ones who went up to the fields the second time, went through the raised beds, and ate some whole lettuce plants and mashed the new radish seedlings. Perhaps they missed the other cows, so they came back, and all were eventually licking the gravel.
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| Sister Patricia shooing the cows away from the flowers |
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| Sister Patricia with the cows |
One black calf and one brown one had particularly beautiful faces. Since the neighbor could not be reached by phone, Sr. Pat drove down to their house, slowly passing the cows as she went, and left a message on their door to tell them where their cows were. Our visitor Kim tried clapping her hands as she moved down the driveway. Lo and behold! The cows all followed her down to a grassy area next to the driveway nearer the road, but not on the road. While we did not want them to remain with us, we did not want them to be hit by a car, either.
Not long afterward, one of the monks, returning from picking up visitors in Albany, saw the neighbors herding the cows back to the pasture to the north of us.
The next day was Cambridge Day, when a balloon festival and tours take place at both monasteries. Since the cows had left us numerous “presents,” we thought it more hospitable to quickly remove as many presents as we could before our many other visitors arrived for the bakery tours and cheesecakes!
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