144. The Cow and the Colt
Nasruddin’s donkey had given birth but died in labor.
Nasruddin wanted to save the donkey’s colt, but that meant giving it milk from the cow, and Nasruddin needed that cow’s milk for his own family.
In despair, he prayed. “O God,” he cried, “please relieve me of this burden and take the little colt into heaven as you did its mother.”
Nasruddin was shocked to discover the next morning that his cow was dead, not the colt.
“O God,” he cried, “I don’t understand! How is it possible that you can’t tell the difference between a cow and a donkey?”
This Tale is from “Tiny Tales of Nasruddin” by Laura Gibbs. The book is licensed under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license. © 2019-202The2 Laura Gibbs
Last Wednesday I posted about finding a dead elk calf. Now I’m not so sure that the calf was dead because today when I walked that same route there was no dead calf there. So he was alive and simply went into ‘hide mode’ when he saw me approaching and then got up and went on his way after I passed. Or, he was dead and someone or some thing took him away although there was no evidence of that. A mystery but I’m glad that I don’t have to walk past a dead calf every couple of days.
We had some more rain yesterday afternoon but the reporting station did not report any. We didn’t get much but it was more than a trace, maybe .01-.02″. The best thing is there are slightly cooler high temperatures but with slightly higher humidity. This has to be the leading edge of the monsoon which this area needs badly. It was dry last summer and they didn’t get a lot of winter snow so there is not much fresh grass which could account for my not seeing many elk along with the disruption by the Forest Service.