My father always knew if there was a cow missing. I don't know how he did this. There were quite a lot of them, and they all looked more or less the same. But he would, perhaps not with one fleeting glance over the herd, but after a day or two of going about his usual business, be able to say with absolute certainty that "Number 203 has disappeared", and that we had better go and have a look for it.
And so, off we went, him driving the tractor, me standing on the carry-all (a kind of wheel-less trailer attached to the back of the tractor), hanging off the back using strands of hayband knotted to the front of the carry-all, pretending to be a world champion surfer or something, and never once thinking that perhaps the knots might not hold and I might end up on my back in a puddle of mud or cow poo. Or maybe I was driving the tractor while dad gripped the front of the carry-all with tense white knuckles, smiling through gritted teeth and keeping his fingers crossed that I wouldn't drive us over a cliff or some such thing.
Anyway, this one particular cow had been missing for a few days, and we had searched and searched with no success. Dad was starting to wonder if perhaps she hadn't somehow escaped into the neighbouring property. But no, they hadn't seen her. So dad went about his daily routine, but quietly, as was his way, keeping half an eye out for our lost Bessie. Or Mabel. Or "Number 359". And it was only a couple of days until that quiet half an eye lit upon a rather unusual sight. So unusual, in fact, that he interrupted what he was doing to come back to the house and say, "You had better come and have a look at this." He wouldn't say what it was (which was not unusual; he never said more than was necessary).
We headed down to one of my favourite places on the farm, a narrow overgrown track at the foot of a steep bluff and running alongside the creek that ran through the property, not far from where a platypus had once allegedly been seen. Walking along, I was wondering what he could possibly have to show me down here. It was a place for standing still and taking in the absolute quiet of the farm, not a place for things that needed "having a look at".
"What can you see?", he said, looking through the thin stand of creek-side blackwood trees. I looked.
"Nothing, dad", I replied.
"You're not looking hard enough."
I looked again. I was starting to feel a bit silly: I really could see nothing. "In the creek", he said helpfully.
And there, standing in the middle of the creek, was the missing cow. Dead, and yet standing upright, as if enjoying a peaceful bath.
"What?!", I exclaimed, not quite registering what I was seeing. Adopting a Sherlock Holmes-like persona, dad ran through the likely circumstances of the cow's demise, as well as he could reconstruct them. There had been rain a few days earlier, and the creek had suddenly gone from a trickle to a flood, which often happened. The cow must have been walking through the creek, which was something they could do when the creek was low (although obviously such activity wasn't encouraged), and got its leg caught in one of the many fallen trees that lay like traps on the creek bed. The flood then came up and the cow drowned. That would explain why she was still standing up: if she had got stuck and starved to death before the flood, she would have fallen over (plus, that would have taken a while, and dad would have realised she was missing much earlier than that, and his eagle eye most probably would have been able to discover her plight before it was too late).
It was a remarkable sight: disturbing, but not without a kind of serene beauty, or grace, or even majesty. I kept waiting for her to turn her head, or swish her tail, or at least say "Moo". The poor old cow.
She had also left dad with a problem. Normally, dead livestock would be removed from the property, or at least taken far away from the working dogs and burned (dogs being attracted to dead cows' guts, in which lurk certain substances that are, unfortunately, fatal for dogs). In the absence of any idea of how to get her out, and given that her semi-submerged state would keep her safe from dogs, dad thought the best thing was to let nature take its eventual course. Which didn't take long: soon, the cow had collapsed and disappeared under the water, where some vestige of her perhaps still lies.
