Swiss Cows Are My Favorite People

So, if you know anything about me at all, you know how much I love cows. I mean, yes, I love all animals but there's something about cows. I was thinking about it the other day and trying to figure out where this obsession with cows started. I did grow up around all the cows on Aunt Meta and Uncle Lorin's ranch. Was it there? Then, my dad did have the drop calf operation that I was around during my teen years. Maybe then? I just couldn't pinpoint it until I found these photos and it all became clear.

These are Swiss cows. Real Swiss cows in the Swiss Alps. Look at them! Don't you just want to grab those little faces and kiss them? I absolutely turn into a baby-talking idiot looking at these two Swissies. I love them! They are my favorite people. One day, I'm going to return to Switzerland and go to the festival that celebrates these beauties.

And here is the why. Bernice Corina Walter-Casas. My Swiss mother who loved everything Swiss because nothing was better in this world than being Swiss. This picture is of my mom in the Swiss Alps at her cousins house. All the cow pictures tonight are from one of the trips my parents took to Switzerland to visit family. My mother's obsession with everything Swiss including Swiss cows was assimilated by me from before birth. I'm convinced. It was obviously passed through the umbilical cord probably along with some Toblerone. 

Even my dad got caught up in being Swiss and he was a full-blooded Spaniard. So, please take note of the massive bell around this gorgeous cow's neck. My mother fell in love with this girl and couldn't get over the big bell she wore. My mom would go all geeky around animals just like I do. So, turns out, the owner of the big belled cow thought my mom was so "special" in her full bodied Swiss cow, baby-talking geekiness, that he actually took the bell off of Bessie (that's what I'm going to name my Swiss cow when I get her home) and gave it to my mother. No joke. True story. Wait, what? You don't believe me?

Would I lie? This is the very bell that hung around Bessie the Swiss cows neck in the Alps of Switzerland. Then, hung in my parents den in Fullerton for decades.

And now it hangs on our closet door in Jacksonville where it shall remain until my Bessie comes home. And yeah, that's a real barn door we use for our closet door. From a real horse barn that was being torn down. What can I say? I'm a Swiss farm girl.