Well here's something funny. Scouty the Nubian was milking for over two years. She just kept milking. She was a pretty good milker. She didn't start out so great, but after a year or so of doing everything the same way twice a day, she learned to run out and jump on the milkstand.
And then she got kind of too good at it. She would run out and jump on the milkstand at the slightest provocation, whether or not it was milk time. If it wasn't milk time, Scouty would run out and jump on the milkstand and then little minnow ideas of dismay would swim across her face.
"Something isn't right," her expression would say, "but I can't put my finger on it." And she would stand there, furrowing and furrowing her brow in the most Nubian way imaginable. This was because there wasn't any grain in the feeder on the milkstand, because it wasn't milk time.
"Scouty," I would tell her, "it isn't milk time." But she was always in a special Scouty zone, and couldn't necessarily hear or interpret helpful suggestions like the ones I always try to give the less fortunate. Even Scouty's twin, Boo, could understand that milk time only came twice a day, rather than, say, seven. Or eighty-one.
So Scouty would stand there until someone helped her across the road, almost always the farmer.
Well a couple of weeks ago, the farmer dried Scouty off. This means that the farmer stopped milking Scouty, and then Scouty stopped producing milk. And dried off.
And so there were no more trips to the milkstand, not even one a day. And since there were no more trips to the milkstand, there was no more grain. Well I was very surprised when Scouty adapted to this almost immediately. She threw herself into her new passion, hogging as much hay as possible.
Now usually when this happens, one of two things will result. Once you stop getting your grain, you will maybe lose a little weight, especially if you weren't giving that much milk anyway since you had already been milking for two years.
Or the other thing that might happen would be that nothing would happen. You wouldn't lose weight, but you would keep the weight you had.
But by some strange reverse miracle of the loaves and fishes, Scouty has been getting fatter and fatter since she stopped getting her grain. She used to look like a Winnebago, but now she looks like a Greyhound bus.
I cannot figure it out.
