Dear Abby

There was recently a letter in that column from a zoo keeper complaining about the idiotic things people tell their kids about animals, rather than getting the straight info from the zoo staff. I had to agree with the guy. Kids deserve good answers. If the parents don't have them, well then, what better time to teach the little folks how to find out, than when they really want to know something? We always took time to give the gang the best answers we could come up with, no matter where we had to look it up, and it paid off in a big way in school and 4-H.

Today the column ran a bunch of responses to that letter, including several wherein parents whined that they thought just taking the kids on an outing ought to be plenty, so why should they bother to actually take the time to learn anything?

My favorite though was from someone who had shown cattle and described some of the things they had overheard. Like that the ones with horns are bulls. And that brown cows give chocolate milk. Those hit home in a big way because I also have heard them too many times to count.

I spent at least one week a year for a good solid dozen years taking the kids to shows and fairs with the string. They never went without a parent until Liz turned 18 and started running things herself. At first they needed a lot of help with clipping and handling the stock. As time went on my contribution became more along the lines of nagging than helping, until most of my week was spent in a lawn chair with a good book and some nice, greasy fair food.

Thus I was in the perfect position to hear all of the misconceptions that city people have about cows. It is certainly okay for them not to know, why would they, but it bugged me that they didn't try to find out the right answers before they passed bad information down to their kids. All they had to do was ask and any farmer hanging around sweeping up straw or making the edge would have been happy to answer questions. I actually liked to discuss farm and animal issues with the public. One friendly, helpful farmer can overcome a heck of a lot of bad press generated by activist groups. There were only a few times where people were unpleasant. Most of them either belonged to PeTA or had spent a little too long in the beer tent.

Maybe that explains the guy who stopped and asked if Liz was Dixie's calf. There was simply no way I could convince him that the young person in jeans and tee shirt, asleep on top of the big old Holstein was my kid and owned the cow in question rather than belonging to her. I do not lie.