February 2026 "For the Love of Cows" by Paula Rawlings

     Cows are everywhere these days. They’re eating in fields, drinking from and soaking in water troughs, chewing atop a hill, jaywalking on the dirt road, over here, over there. I’ve seen models sporting perfect cow physiques on billboards and appreciated their skill in acting in milk and cheese commercials. People draw them in cartoons, squeeze them into cartons, sprinkle them as fertilizer under heirloom tomato plants, slap their roasted loins onto white plates. Cows are even taking over car seats—the adult kind, not the kid kind…I think—and meandering into our homes (YouTube verified). They even fly. I will forgive this invasion because they’re so darn cute, and because I do like me a bowl of mint chocolate chip ice cream once in a while.

     In honor of Cow Milked While Flying in an Airplane Day, I highly recommend honoring the cow. You can honor the general definition of cow, or honor Ollie (a Guernsey), who was the first to fly in an airplane. They chose her for her compliant nature and high milk production. She boarded a Ford Trimotor airplane to fly the seventy-two miles from her home at Sunnymeade Farms in Bismarck, Missouri, to St. Louis, Missouri on February 18, 1930, during an airplane expo. She was special, and I think cow-napped. Ollie unknowingly participated in a publicity stunt disguised as a scientific experiment to discover the effects of elevation on milk production in cows. Ultimately, the cooperation of cow, farmer/milker, pilot, and airplane promoted aviation and dairy farming because airplanes were (and still are) cool, and apparently that goes for Gurnsey cows and their milk too. While flying, she produced 24 quarts of milk that were then poured into paper cartons and parachuted down to the people below. The scientists of the day claimed the milk would be air-cooled by the time the cartons reached the ground.

     That was then, and this is now. Science has come a long way. Cows today still eat grass; they moo and poo, but with advancements in science, technology, and selective breeding, they are basically super cows. Yeah. By the power of humankind, cows can produce more milk, inherit fewer medical conditions, contract fewer diseases, handle heat better, handle cold better, and now some can produce human proteins in their milk.

       In 1997, Rosie became the first transgenic cow. Scientists engineered her to produce milk enriched with a human protein called alpha-lactalbumin. According to Agricultural Biosecurity, “This makes her milk more nutritionally balanced than natural cow’s milk and suitable for babies and elderly people with special nutritional or digestive needs.” I kind of want to say, gross. Agricultural Biosecurity claims that transgenic animals “could produce low-cholesterol eggs, reduced-lactose milk, and low-fat meat.” Sure, it’s all good for infants and the elderly’s digestion, but will a properly functioning adult human tongue taste the difference? Will longtime lovers of cow flesh and milk taste the difference? Will there be adverse reactions inside the human body because of these human proteins? Will we be eating humans?

      So, go ahead, celebrate Cow Milked While Flying in an Airplane Day. If you were hoping to sample some transgenic cow milk, you can’t. It’s not available for commercial sale to the public, but there’s plenty of milk and meat at the store. Or, feel free to caress (or clean) your car’s leather upholstery, cast seasoned fertilizer in your gardens, and avoid hitting a cow of any kind in the road. I highly recommend, and plan to (but will probably forget) to observe someone else gnawing on a steak, watch a cow in a cartoon, movie, or field, and lick some slow-churned mint chocolate chip ice cream.