Vegan Cow Wrangling in Rishikesh, India

FEBRUARY 24, 2013

All hell on four legs broke loose today.  I blame Jen, my neighbor, who left today.  Up to this point in the trip she was the defacto zoo keeper here at the guesthouse.  My whole life, I have been the biggest animal lover that I know.  No longer.  While I let the guesthouse dog curl up on my lap on a cold day, Jen was inside giving the stray puppies a bath.  When I would save my fruit cores, peels and scraps to feed the cows, Jen would reach into her purse and feed a street cow a fresh orange.  This woman loves animals. 

Her departure from Rishikesh clearly created a disturbance in the animal Force.  A violent dog fight broke out in the back of the property.  I’ve put myself between animals and humans before (protecting the animal, of course) though I will never get in the middle of a dog fight. 

Taking out the compost

Later that night I headed out for dinner and noticed the little albino calf running wild around the grounds.  Instead of his normal sedate state, tied to his post, he was loose and bucking like a wild horse as he covered all 40 meters of the narrow passage in front of the house.  I went back inside to tell the managers.  The only one present was a woman who was waaaay too timid to catch the little beast.  I stood outside the doorway to the tarpaulin barn and waited for the cow to make his pass.  At the right moment I jumped out and wrangled him down.

Still brushing myself clean as I walked down the driveway, I noticed two of the neighboring cows walking up our drive.  They typically sleep at the base of the driveway in the street each night, but had now snuck in and made most of the steep climb to our guest house after getting in through the open gate.  At this moment, one of the brothers who runs the joint came up the drive on his motorcycle weaving between the baby and the mother cow.   Instead of stopping to take care of the situation, he slows down just enough to take one hand off the handlebars to waive at the cows and shout over the engine noise, “Friend!  Get them out!”  

What the eff?  Sure, its great that they look at me as member of the family around here and not just another tourist.  I’m just not sure that putting the vegan in charge of wrangling the milk machines is the best idea.