Isn't life a constant question - why are we here? What's the purpose of our existence? Is there a light at the end of the tunnel, or is it just the glow of an oncoming train?
Well, fear not, for clarity doesn’t seem to come from my visits to the looney island of Chirikof, a place that gives a whole new meaning to the term 'Herd Immunity'. Nestled somewhere in the Gulf of Alaska, you could call Chirikof 'Moo York', if cows had skyscrapers that is. Downtown, midtown or uptown, Chirikof has the answer to the age-old question - where's the beef? Here. It's all here.
The population? More than 2,000 mooing citizens, who've elected a bull as their mayor. Or that's what they seem to be telling me in between my bouts of existential crisis. The cows have a heritage too. Russian settlers introduced them before packing up shop in 1867 when they sold the place to Uncle Sam. The cows have been partying hard ever since.
Remnants of the human presence include one Jack Mitchel, the lord of bovine castaways, who tried to control the utopia with new bulls. But as they say, you can't control cows with bulls, you control them with... actually, you can't control cows, period. So here I am, wondering where it all went wrong, or if it went right at all. Is this utopia a heaven hidden in plain sight while we chase death in the shadows?
Jack Mitchel gave up and left in 1950. Looking at this bovine wonderland, I think to myself - "Jack, oh sweet naive Jack, you missed out." But then the cows start mooing at me, and I begin questioning not only my life decisions but my sanity too.
I'm laughing to myself as I wrap up, thinking - I started life in a maternity ward and I'm ending up in a dairy. Pretty sure that's beneath rock bottom. But hey, at least the cows seem to enjoy my company, or they're planning a coup. Could go either way. Cow-ni fe chi, they say. Sounds oriental, but it's actually a cow's way of saying goodbye. Or so I deluded myself into believing.
Based on the original article "Welcome to the Republic of Cows".
