Background on a Cow

We were sitting in our living room post-dinner the other night, reading and computing, when came a knock at the door.  Unknown people with wine glasses in hand  appeared.  Not exactly a standard event in Point Roberts, but not inexplicable.  Neighbors out taking a walk, but in this case, neighbors we've never met.

They came to us because they recognized the knit neckties on the firs in our front yard.  Said Mr. Drew to his wife, "This must be Judy Ross's house."  And they knocked.  And indeed it was.

The company turned out to be the owners of Scarlett O'Holstein, Point Roberts' iconic cow who lives within the walls of Drewhenge on Benson.  Picture below:

As one can imagine, we were interested in them and their background and in Scarlett and her background.  Mr. Drew of Drewhenge will be happy to change the world by reintroducing arches to (relatively) short bridges (see Drewhenge arch at entryway): they last centuries, unlike the way they currently build overpasses of various sorts.  Etc.

Scarlett is an orphan whom they adopted after the cow had a brief history of kidnapping and abandonment.  At one point, she was left in a snowdrift in the street mid-way of Tsawwassen.  She ended up at something like a dump, and it was from there that she was rescued by Mr. Drewhenge in the early 2000's.

But that is the mid-part of her story; a bleak part, certainly, but only part of the narrative arc.  Long before that dump experience, she had had a successful career on stage and screen which, like many a celebrity career ultimately went south when unexpected event occurred.  In Scarlett's case, she was kidnapped by wild and willful teenagers and then moved about, left on lawns as a morning surprise and then disappearing a few nights later only to be left on someone else's lawn.  And then the snowdrift...Sigh.

In her early glory days, though, she was an animatronic cow (many cables where her tail exits, her guardian says) for Dairyland and the Fraser Valley Milk Producers.  She performed at trade shows, she starred in commercials ('Got Milk' campaign), she had her own dressing room, I imagine.  She was well cared for, with a host of technical caregivers and operators.  Then disaster, but then rescue!

And now, since 2004, she lives in decent and modestly celebrated retirement with us here in P.R.  It seems an appropriate end.  I mean, it's a retirement community, really.  And a community actively involved in animal welfare, even animatronic animal welfare.