Holy Cow: A Modern-Day Dairy Tale
Written and Narrated By: David Duchovny
Length: 2 hrs and 55 mins
So sue me! Duchovny’s narration has grown on me with this “udderly” (…groan…) wonderful tale!
Meet Elsie Bovary, our heroine-with-many-teats extraordinaire. Elsie lives on a small farm in upstate New York, as her mother did, as her mother’s mother did, and so on and so on and so on. She’s a content cow, happy to chew her cud, walk in green fields, give milk until her udders are empty, leaving her svelte and smooth. She looks forward to having daughters and living out her life until she “disappears” as her mother did, as all older cows do. All is well.
That is until The Event, the night when the cow patty hits the fan. She and her bestie Mallory sneak out of the barn one night and skulk into the Bulls’ pasture, looking for an adventure, hankering for maybe a booty call or two. But Elsie isn’t taken with the bulls, tho’ Mallory is a hit; instead Elsie is drawn to the farmhouse where the family is watching TV. She can’t help but see what’s on the God Box: A documentary or something about factory farms. This blows her mind. Chickens crammed into cages, so cramped their claws grow into the mesh. And more. And worst? Cows being stunned then slaughtered, hung onto hooks to be eviscerated. So much blood.
This has Elsie questioning her existence as a cow, questioning Life its very self. Soon, with a bit of research, she discovers that in India cows are not only NOT treated in so repreHENsible a manner, but they’re revered and honored. India is The. Place. To. GO! And so she makes her plan.
But the future isn’t bright for a lot of critters on the farm. Jerry the Pig would like to make a break for it. There’s this place called Israel where they avoid pigs like the plague. And Tom the turkey is all skinny and scrawny, cuz there’s this thing in November called Thanksgiving, and he has to avoid being plump and delicious. For him, there’s a country called Turkey where they’ve gotta worship their namesake, right?
So off the three set, escaping from the farm, hoofing it to the big city, catching a flight to the Middle East. Along the way, they foil a Wolf, evade a police Dog (Who really only wants to be a seeing-eye dog), and they accidentally cause a truce with the help of a Camel.
Holy Cow is disarmingly simple, but it’s chockfull of meditations on what it means to be a mindful and worthwhile creature/person on this planet. It speaks to man’s inhumanity to other creatures, of man’s inhumanity to man. All while never taking itself too terribly seriously, as this whole chronicle is being written by Elsie two years after the events, and she’s hoping it’ll be turned into a movie (Producers take note!). She’s totally into product placement, and she’s totally into cultural references. After all, her story IS to be read to children at night (Along with the cow who jumped over the moon), but she has to entertain parents as well, right?
I had a problem with David Duchovny’s narration in Bucky F*cking Dent, even tho’ as that story went along, his narration grew on me. But here, he’s a delight. No, he STILL doesn’t do ANYthing in the way of varying his voice for each character, but his delivery is so flat and droll, he’s an absolute delight. I mean, Elsie doesn’t take herself seriously, why should Duchovny. I really, really liked the narration here. It was easy to get into the smooth rhythm, and you could almost hear the rimshots with each of Elsie’s one-line BOOMs!
Not even 3 hours, there’s a lot to find in this little gem of an audiobook. Kindness and wonder towards animals; peace in the Middle East.
A cow with an agent.
What’s not to love?!?
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