Once, I milked a cow. It was in Louisiana, when I was a cub reporter at the Hammond Daily Star (across Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans). What I most clearly recall is the brush with the baby cow. “Stick your finger in his mouth!” the farmer said with that mischievous twinkle in his eye. I was a New Yorker fresh off the Long Island Railroad platform. What did I know?

I pointed my index finger at the cute wee thing. Its eyes bulged as it locked onto said finger before quickly sucking in my entire arm, up to the elbow. I screamed and pulled, the farmer nearly collapsed laughing, and my photojournalist friend had to help wrestle my appendage from the greedy beast’s maw.

Now, many years later, I’m at the Orange County Fair, trying to reconnect to our agrarian roots by milking a goat!

R

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