At the Scottish Highland Games I noticed some people wandering around with these placid quiet cattle on a tether. I didn’t get too close since the horns looked very sharp. At the crest of a hill beneath a huge Oak tree, I found this small enclosure with several adults and quite a few calfs. Even though there was plenty of hay to eat in the enclosure the cattle would always approach anyone who held a handfull of hay for them to eat. They kept sticking their wet noses through the bars near me and looking at me with their sad eyes. I guess they thought I had some tender morsel hidden in my sketch pad. Karen Cali, a fellow urban sketcher, was also at the Highland Games and when I told her I had sketched the cattle, she said, “They are hairy and horny just like most men I have known.”
Later near the games fields, I was walking over to the food booths, one of which featured a picture of one of these cattle, and the sign said this was the finest, most tender beef you would ever eat. They were selling Highland Beef burgers, but I didn’t have the heart to try one. As I got closer to the burger stand, I almost stepped in a large pile of dung. I wondered aloud, “They must have been bringing over one of the cattle on a tether and he read the sign and realized his fate.”
