Are you ready to see cows with big rabbit ears?

One perk of shopping at Henry’s Marketplace (soon to be renamed Sprouts after the two companies recently merged) is to find a little coupon booklet called Mambo Sprouts. The downside of this coupon book is I’m interested in only a few coupons. Since they are great-value coupons, such as $1 off soy hot dogs, I always grab several booklets, knowing I’ll throw most of the pages away.

Today I discovered a display that instantly solves my wasted paper dilemma. Henry’s has created a stand that displays the Mambo Sprouts coupons in individual pouches. This allows you to take only the coupons you need, and as many as you want. Pretty neat invention - I like it!

Henry's Marketplace coupon stand

As I was racking up all of the grabbing just a few of the coupons I’ll use, I glanced down and saw a few cows that deserved closer attention. Here are the cows from the bottom left hand side:

Henry's coupon stand - cows with rabbit ears

What do you think about the calf’s ears? Alright, I hear you, you think it’s just a fluke, so for comparison purposes I’ll show you a close-up of the cows on the bottom right hand side:

Henry's coupon stand - more cows with rabbit ears

Here’s another calf with rabbit ears! I have three possible explanations for these giant ears:

1) My black cat used to have giant ears when he was a kitten. He eventually grew into them. Well, mostly. So maybe the illustrator of these cows has a cat with big ears and thinks the same applies to baby cows.

2) The illustrator doesn’t have a cat but he’s a big fan of Skippyjon Jones (another cat!) and thinks it’s cool to have big ears.

3) The illustrator is a fan of Despereaux in The Tale of Despereaux. Maybe in his mind these baby cows are unlikely heroes destined to do great things…

If you can think of any other reason for the big cow ears, I’d love to hear it!

Do cows like music?

The pink cows from yesterday’s post make it difficult to top it off, so I won’t even try. I saw cows in several children’s books today but my featured daily cow comes from the music studio. I took my oldest there this afternoon for a drum session. When he was done, he started playing around with the hats and puppets the owner has on display. That’s when I noticed this cow puppet:

Cow hand puppet

It does look  little nicer and more sturdy than the cow hand puppet I recently saw at Michael’s. Still, I couldn’t stop wondering, why would there be a cow (puppet or not) in a music studio? But then I also saw sheep, chicken and duck puppets, so a cow seems like the perfect complement to the other barn animals. I can’t imagine what they sound like when they try to sing all together. Fortunately we didn’t stay long enough to find out…

Forget about purple cows! Have you ever seen pink cows?

I believe my first cow of the day showed up while I was in the waiting room of my doctor’s office. I had to bring my kids with me (no school or daycare for them on Thursdays) and they were flipping through the magazines and newspapers laying around when I saw this rodeo ad at the back of the East County Gazette:

East County Gazette with rodeo ad

You may remember from previous posts that I’m not a fan of rodeos, and after taking a close look at the horrible face this bull makes, I find rodeos even more disturbing:

Lakeside Rodeo - bull riding

Doesn’t this face say, please take me out of my misery now?

I wanted to show you more of the cows I saw today but changed my mind. Why? Because Tilly Bud from The Laughing Housewife shared a video with me in response to yesterday’s post on a cow stealing milk at WalMart. This British TV ad for Cravendale milk shows a much better behaved cow helping her friends with their grocery shopping:

After watching this video, I couldn’t help but look at some other Cravendale milk videos and I think my new favorite milk video is this one, featuring pink cows, rather than the common purple cows (and for a good reason). If you’ve seen The Sixth Sense, I think you’ll get a kick out of this:

Nothing beats British humor humour (sorry, bad American spelling), especially when it involves our dairy friends!

A cow stealing milk at WalMart?

Cow suit - cow costume

Surfing the news on the internet… I’ve done it in the past and it’s only led me to seeing cows. Today was no exception and I clearly haven’t learned my lesson yet. Although, I have to admit I’m quite ecstatic about what I stumbled upon and I feel compelled to share this story with you. Read on, I don’t think you’ll regret it.

Imagine a cow entering WalMart, grabbing gallons of milk off the shelf and pushing them out of the store in a cart without paying for any of it. Do you think I’m making this up? Well, the answer is, partially. The real story happened more this way. A man dressed in a cow suit entered a WalMart store in Virginia – I need to mention he was walking on all fours at the time of entry. You have to wonder what the elderly WalMart greeter thought as he/she saw the cow entering the store… The cow man grabbed 26 gallons of milk, put them in a cart, which he pushed right out of the store, skipping the registers. He then proceeded to give away the milk to passers-by, who all refused! People, are you insane? When a cow offers you free milk so you don’t have to pay $4 a gallon, you don’t say no!

The man was eventually arrested – do I need to mention the arrest happened at a burger joint? At the time the article was written, there was no clear explanation for his behavior, except for a possible prank that went wrong. I’ll let you read the original article about this man in a cow suit on your own. It’s udderly clear the reporter and quite a few other people had fun coming up with puns…

It’s nice to see that even when milk prices go down, some people don’t lose their sense of humor. Let’s hope this poor guy faces a lenient judge. One who likes cows…

Wow! Cow!

By now I’m sure you’ve noticed that I read a lot of new children’s books with my kids every week. If I showed you every single cow I get to see through this medium, you’d be shocked – and probably bored. You’d also think I’m picking all of the children’s books that feature cows. Indeed farm animals are pretty popular characters and the rule seems to be, if you see ANY farm animal in a children’s book, at some point a cow will appear. Just be ready for it.

One of the children’s books my kids picked to read today is Robert Neubecker’s Wow! America! We’ve read the other Wow! series books, such as Wow! City! and Wow! School! so when I discovered there was a Wow! America!, I had to check it out. 

Wow! America! book by Robert Neubecker

In every book of the series and on every page of each book, you’ll find a hidden dog (well, if you’ve got good eyes).  In Wow! America! you’ll find a not-so-hidden cow. The girl milking the cow is called Izzy, by the way, and is the author’s daughter.

Wow! Cow! in Wow! America!

For you to understand the grandeur of this cow, there’s something important I need to mention. In its open position this book spread is 13 inches high and 22 inches wide!!! So you can’t help but be surprised when you flip to this page. Mr. Neubecker, don’t you think you should have called this spread Wow! Cow!, not Wow! Corn! By the way I love the flower crown on its head - a nice touch.

So what do you think should go right after Wow! Cow!Corn!? How about Wow! Cowboys!

Wow! Cowboys! from Wow! America!

Here’s a whole spread about cowboys (and cowgirls) with cows included (top of the page). Now, that’s what America is all about!