The Cow Who Came Home Alone

• 3 minute read
• Ages 4-9
• Bedtime Stories

In that village the cows went out in the morning together and came back in the evening on their own.

A boy took them out. He took all of them, from every house, in one herd down the lane and out to the grazing ground, and left them there.

And in the evening they came back by themselves.

How they knew

Nobody drove them home. Nobody counted them out and nobody counted them in.

At about the time the light started to go, they simply stopped eating and began to walk, all of them together, back up the track and into the village.

And then they separated.

Each cow turned into her own lane and walked to her own gate and stood there, and somebody came out and let her in, and that was the end of it.

They had all learned it and nobody had taught any of them.

Lali

There was one cow called Lali who belonged to a house at the very end of the longest lane.

She had further to walk than any of the others, and she was the last to arrive every single evening, and she had been doing it for eleven years.

The house at the end of the lane belonged to an old woman who lived alone.

She would come out at about the right time and stand at the gate, and wait, and after a while Lali would appear at the top of the lane and come down it.

The evening she was late

One evening Lali did not come.

The old woman waited at the gate as usual and the light went, and the other cows were all in, and there was nothing at the top of the lane.

She got a lamp and walked out along the track, which she had not done for years and which took her a long time.

And she found Lali about halfway, standing perfectly still, with a very new calf beside her that could not walk properly yet.

Coming in

It took them nearly two hours to get home.

The calf managed a few steps at a time and then had to stop, and Lali stopped when the calf stopped and did not go on ahead once, and the old woman walked beside them with the lamp and did not hurry either of them.

They came down the lane at about nine o'clock.

And the old woman opened the gate and the three of them went in, and she put the lamp down and shut it behind them, and the village was quiet and everybody else's cows had been in for hours.