Unexpected city-dwellers

Second week teaching.

Thursdays are by far my favorite day: I have Fridays off, so Thursdays signify the end of the week. But more than that, it's become my day for exploring the city. My first and only class is Special Language Seminar at 15.45 - an amazing group of first-years - so I've been coming into the department, getting some prep work done for the following week, and then going out for walks around lunch time.

Last week, I encountered something rather interesting:

From the university, if you walk around the corner of the building toward the mountain, you will pass a small daycare, an abandoned factory marked in bright graffiti, and a lesser-known walking bridge, which takes you first over the highway, then across the Nitra River. On either side of the river are walking paths, which serve as arterials throughout the city limits. (See above, if you can't picture it.)

But I didn't take those paths. I kept walking straight, into what looked like a sizeable city park. You know, the typical imagery: a couple making out and nearly horizontal on a bench, mothers wheeling strollers, school kids with ice cream cones, and all around trees, playground apparatus, and...

A cow?
Yes. A cow was, in fact, sitting in the middle of the park. For no good reason. She had a yellow tag in one ear, and for a second I thought she might belong to the elderly chap reading a newspaper on the bench behind her. But no--when I asked the university folks what, exactly, this bovine friend was doing there, they told me:

It's so the city kids know what a cow looks like. (Of course.) I guess this was something of a problem? If this is an urban epidemic, it might just be a matter of time before Central Park gets a barn.

The alternate response to my question (because I asked several people about this) was that she was there for the kids to play with. A kind of mammalian playground. And, you know, fresh milk.

I should probably mention that these guys were hanging about, too:



But they were in a fenced area, and the sheep had other sheep; the goats had other goats. Our poor cow was all by herself in a sea of swingsets and walking trails.

Alright, enough pontificating on furry things. Finally uploaded the SK pics. And all of this multimedia is about to wilt my feeble department computer, so I'll wrap things up for now.