{"id":87415,"date":"2017-12-13T17:32:31","date_gmt":"2017-12-13T22:32:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/?p=87415"},"modified":"2017-12-12T20:55:41","modified_gmt":"2017-12-13T01:55:41","slug":"a-cow-barns-musical-christmas-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/?p=87415","title":{"rendered":"A Cow Barn\u2019s Musical Christmas Story"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
Hobie Morris<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The old wooden barn was silent and dark.\u00a0 Snow lay on its roof and clothed the landscape.\u00a0 It was Christmas Eve.\u00a0 It was the night before Christmas when all through the cow barn not a creature was stirring except for the mice.\u00a0\u00a0 The cats looked asleep but with one eye always open.\u00a0 The cows sleep contentedly on fresh bedding.\u00a0 A cat stretched out on the warm back of a cow named Daisy.\u00a0 A few cows stood, contentedly chewing their cud.\u00a0 Once in a great while this quiet was interrupted by a rattling metal stanchion, as a hungry cow searched in the manger for a few spears of hay.<\/p>\n

The late December Christmas Eve night is inky black and cold.\u00a0\u00a0 Every little while a slip of moon momentarily peeked through the moving clouds, allowing a burst of twinkling stars shining for many millions of years ago from the deepest recesses of the universe.\u00a0 Inside the barn the warmth from the cows keeps the outside cold at bay.<\/p>\n

On towards morning the cows hear a familiar sound.\u00a0 Their Santa Claus is approaching as they hear the crunch, crunch of his feet on the hardened snow path.\u00a0 Several cows let out a welcoming \u201cmoo.\u201d\u00a0 The door to the milk house opens and a light flicked on.\u00a0 It\u2019s time for the farmer to feed the cows.\u00a0 Sweet smelling square bales of hay from the overhead loft are broken open and given out as are scoops of grain.\u00a0 The farmer\u2019s adult son turns on the dusty old radio stuck on the cobwebbed overhead rafter.\u00a0 Cows like music.\u00a0\u00a0 It seems to calm them down and does have a positive influence on milk production.\u00a0 For several mornings now the radio has been playing popular Christmas music.<\/p>\n

After feeding the cows the farmer and his adult son return to their warm kitchen for a hearty breakfast.\u00a0 Soon they\u2019ll return to the barn and begin milking the well fed cows.<\/p>\n

Recently this simple country man did a musical survey.\u00a0 The vast majority of cows like to listen to (naturally) country and western music.\u00a0 One local farmer actually sings to his cows.\u00a0 Do they like this?\u00a0 Do they respond with a pleasurable (or displeasurable) moo, or is it a boo?<\/p>\n

Barnyard musical authorities place C&W music at the tail end of the highbrow musical world.\u00a0 Barn yard cats, however, have a far different musical appreciation.\u00a0 Their musical preferences are far more high- brow compared to their Holstein neighbors.<\/p>\n

In this particular old wooden barn the Alpha cat is a distinguished looking feline named \u201cBeethoven\u201d\u00a0 (Mr. B. to his friends).\u00a0 Mr. B. is both the barn\u2019s musical maestro and impresario.\u00a0 Mr. B. has in fact created in the overhead hay loft a sound proof area among the hay bales where the feline barnyard symphony has been practicing almost weekly since July, when the Christmas Day music was selected by Mr. B. at a committee.<\/p>\n

The orchestra is small, with four violinists, three French horns, one cello, two trumpets and a squeaky clarinet.\u00a0 A few nights before the scheduled Christmas Day concert, Mr. B. had a super secret dress rehearsal.\u00a0 Mr. B. had on a black tuxedo with tails, a sparkling white shirt and black bow tie.\u00a0 He let his hair and whiskers grow and as they were both white, he was quite a commanding presence, with his sparkling eyes and Chesire smile.\u00a0 He let his white whiskers grow long and his eye brows thick.\u00a0 With all the orchestra members poised he raised his baton and the rehearsal began\u2026<\/p>\n

Cats have many musical advantages over the other barn occupants.\u00a0 Cats have good ears for listening and playing\u00a0 and, yes, singing from time to time.\u00a0 In fact, cats have 32 muscles in each ear and can make over a hundred vocal sounds, leaving dogs with only around 10 sounds and cows barely breaking the plus side of the chart.\u00a0 Of course, cats have been nurturing their musical interests since they were domesticated around 9,000 years ago.\u00a0 Seemingly disinterested\u00a0 in humans, they do, in effect, enjoy our company more than toys, food, catnip and even the smell of other cats.<\/p>\n

Their musical tastes indicate a strong indifference to pop music, an earth shattering rejection of heavy metal but, by all studies, relish the classical music.\u00a0 One study indicates a particular preference to music by George Frederick Handel, including in their musical appreciation repertoire Mozart, Bach, Vivaldi, Telemann, William Boyce and baroque music.<\/p>\n

That is why in July Mr. B. selected Handel\u2019s famous Christmas Oratorio to perform on Christmas Day in this old wooden barn in the hills of rural central New York.\u00a0 Mr. B. ran into only one obstacle.\u00a0 The mice who had previously agreed to sing in the oratorio refused to sing when Mr. B. couldn\u2019t guarantee them a free hunt zone from their traditional barn enemies\u2014the cats.\u00a0 So Mr. B.\u2019s symphony orchestra will only play Handel\u2019s majestic music.<\/p>\n

Around noon time, on Christmas Day, with the barn full of four legged, energetic and animated creatures, Mr. B\u2019s classical musical concert went off beautifully, with many bravos signified in different ways by the barn occupants, including the farmer, his son and all the surrounding farming neighbors who had been invited to the concert.\u00a0\u00a0 It was one of the most beautiful and loving concerts that they had ever enjoyed.\u00a0 There was indeed peace on earth as all the enemies sat and listened in peace and harmony to the inspiring and uplifting music some feel sent to Handel from God Himself.<\/p>\n

Hobie Morris is a Brookfield resident and simple country man.<\/em><\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The old wooden barn was silent and dark.\u00a0 Snow lay on its roof and clothed the landscape.\u00a0 It was Christmas Eve.\u00a0 It was the night before Christmas when all through the cow barn not a creature was stirring except for the mice.\u00a0\u00a0 The cats looked asleep but with one eye always open.\u00a0 The cows sleep […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":42368,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[23677,23808,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-87415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-columns","category-opinion","category-top-story"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p43meu-mJV","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/madisoncountycourier.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/Morris-head-new.jpg?fit=226%2C287&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=87415"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87415\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/42368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=87415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=87415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=87415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}