By Rudyard Kipling, 13 Dec. 1890
Understand that I am not at all proud of this performance. In Florida men land tarpon, which sometime run up to 120 pounds, stuff and exhibit them and become puffed up. On the Columbia River sturgeon of 150 lb. weight are taken with the line and those fishermen too, become proud.
However, it is nothing to me that I have hooked and played seven hundred pounds weight of quarry with a beautiful quill minnow that glittered with hooks, and cost eighteenpence.
The minnow and I and a rod went down to a brook to attend to a small jack who lived there. The minnow was thrown as a fly several times, and, owing to my peculiar methods of fly throwing, nearly six pennyworth of the hooks came off, either in my coat-collar, or my thumb, or the back of my hand. Fly fishing is a very gory amusement.
The jack was not interested in the minnow, but towards twilight a boy opened a gate of the field and let in some twenty or thirty cows and half-a-dozen horses, and they were all very much interested.
I had given up all hope of catching my jack, but I made a final cast which for pure skill, exact judgment of distance, and perfect coordination of hand and eye, would have taken top prize at a bait-casting tournament. That was the first half of it. The second was postponed because the quill minnow would not return to its proper place, which was under the lobe of my left ear as usual. I supposed it had caught a grass tuft, till I saw a large black and white cow trying to rub her flank with her nose. She looked at me reproachfully, and her look said: –‘The season is too far advanced for gadflies. What is this strange Disease?’ I replied, ‘Madam, I must apologise for an unwarrantable liberty on the part of my minnow, but if you will have the goodness to keep still until I can reel in, we will adjust this little difficulty.’
I reeled in very cautiously, but she would not wait. She put her tail in the air and ran. It was a purely involuntary motion on my part, but I struck and the reel began to sing just as merrily as though I had caught my jack. But had it been the jack, the minnow would have come away. Because it was an innocent cow that had done me no harm the minnow held tight and I was forced to dance up and down a large field. I took gigantic strides, and every stride found me up to my knees in marsh. We skimmed over the miry backwaters, and floated through the patches of rush that squirted black filth over my face. Sometimes we whirled through a mob of her friends and they looked scandalized; and sometimes a young and frivolous horse would join in the chase for a few miles, and kick mud into my eyes; and through it all, I was aware of my own voice crying:– ‘Pussy, pussy, pussy! Pretty pussy! Come along then, puss-cat!’ You see it is hard to speak to a cow properly, and she would not listen — no, she would not listen.
Then she stopped, and she said, ‘I haven’t had my supper, and I want to go to bed, and please don’t worry me.’ And I said, ‘There are three courses open to you, my dear lady. If you’ll have the common sense to hold still I’ll get my knife and you shall have the minnow. Or, if you’ll let me move across to your near side, the thing will come away in one tweak. Better still, go to a post and rub it out, dear. It won’t hurt much, but if you think I’m going to lose my rod to please you, you are mistaken.’ And she said, ‘I don’t understand what you are saying. I am very, very unhappy.’ And I said, ‘It’s all your fault for trying to fish. Do go to the nearest gate-post, you nice fat thing, and rub it out.’
For a moment I fancied, she was taking my advice. She ran away, and I followed. But all the other cows came with us in a bunch, and I thought of Texan cowboys killed by stampeding cattle. Again she stopped and her sisters stood moonfaced round her. It seemed that she might, now, run towards me, and I looked for a tree, because cows are very different from salmon, who only jump against the line, and never molest the fisherman.
What followed was worse than any direct attack. She began to buck, to stand on her head and her tail alternately, to leap into the sky, all four feet together, and to dance on her hind legs. It was so violent and improper, so desperately unladylike, that I was inclined to blush. That abandon might go on all night in the lonely meadow, and if it went on all night — this was pure inspiration — I might be able to worry through the fishing line with my teeth.
Those who desire an entirely new sensation should chew with all their teeth, and against time, through a best waterproofed silk line, one end of which belongs to a mad cow dancing rings in the moonlight; at the same time keeping one eye on the cow and the other on the top joint of a split-cane rod. She bucked and I bit on the slack just in front of the reel; and I am positive that that line was cored with steel wire.
The wheep of the broken line running through the rings told me that finally the cow and I were parted. I had already bidden goodbye to some teeth; but no price is too great for freedom of the soul.
‘Madam,’ I said, ‘the minnow and twenty feet of very superior line are yours without reservation. For the wrong I have unwittingly done to you I express my sincere regret.’ She or one of her companions must have stepped on the free end of the line in the dark, for she bellowed wildly and ran away, followed by all the cows, and I hoped the minnow was disengaged at last.
So, do you wonder why cow fishing never caught on?
Sam Moore
