Trying to find peace

As I woke in the cold country house, I opened my sleeping bag and saw the vapour of my breath emanating from my mouth and nostrils. I rubbed my hands together and blowed into them to try to wake them up. I moved towards the window and opened the moth-eaten curtains.

‘Jasus!’ I said to myself taking a step backwards, my hands moving towards my heart. Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought to wake up to a cow at my window. The large brown animal with a white muzzle was just there chewing some grass and mirrored my fright by mooing. She suspended her munching, the grass in her mouth, as I rushed out of the room.

I walked into the sitting room / dining room / kitchen and saw my brother pouring kettle water into a tea pot. ‘You’d never guess what I just saw!’ I told him as he let the tea bags in the pot brew. He looked at me quizzically as if he was expecting me to just tell him.

I stood there frozen, mesmerised that the animal I fear most had the audacity to frighten the living shite out of me when I had just woken up. If I was cold before, I had definitely warmed up then. I looked at my brothers expectant eyes and went over to the old, rickety cottage door and put on my blue wellington boots.

I walked around the perimeter of the building to the wall where she stood, as bold as brass, picking up the grass with her long tongue, chewing it with a loud crunching sound. She turned her head to look at me and moved closer. The closer she moved forward, the further I moved back. What a sight it must have been, me in my nighty and blue boots backing away from a cow like it was a mountain lion.

I kept retreating until I bumped into something. I screamed at the top of my lungs petrified that there be two of them. ‘Eh, ouch!’ It was my brother referring to the hot liquid that coated the front of his pyjamas, an empty cup in his hand.  

‘Jasus’ I repeated, fright seemed to be coming at all angles for me that morning. And to think I came out to the country side for some peace......Jasus!