What now, carabao?

Carabaos are calm, practical creatures. They don’t like getting excited or hysterical because, well, it would just take up too much energy! And we all know that the hardworking carabao needs all the energy it can get.

Not even the most serene carabao, however – which was what Rosalinda was – can retain a peaceful outlook when confronted with the fact that their very existence might soon be coming to an end!

It all began on the day they delivered the tractor. It was high noon and Rosalinda, after plowing through mud for most of the morning, was having a nice, cool wallow in her favorite mudhole. She could hear mysterious rumbling noises and the shrill, excited voices of her master and his family in the distance, but it’s hard to faze a carabao when she’s deep in her wallow, so she just let it flow like muddy water over her broad back. The unusual squawking of her bird-friend Bubu was harder to ignore, however.

“Hoy, wake up, wake up!” he chirped, hopping from one end of her back to the other, madly flapping his white wings. “I have just seen something horrible.”

“What?” Rosalinda lowed. Really, she didn’t know why he would work himself into such a state when it was so hot!

“There is a new tractor at your master’s house!” And Bubu fluttered to rest on her back and waited. Egrets know that it takes a carabao a while to think some things through.

A tractor, Rosalinda was thinking – now, what is that again? Oh, yes, that noisy machine that the farmer next door has. The one he uses to plow the fields and haul things with, instead of a carabao. Instead of a carabao? Oh, dear!

Later, as she and her master were plowing the field, Rosalinda was so preoccupied with thoughts of being replaced by the tractor that she kept turning the wrong way, and the farmer had to pull extra hard and hallooed at her several times.

“Ah, well,” he said as he was unhitching her from the plow, “now that I have a new tractor, I won’t have to yell at you anymore, eh?”

Little did he know how he had terrified poor Rosalinda, who got more and more frightened as the days went by! She was no longer hitched to the plow or cart and, what was worse, the farmer’s children would take her out to the choicest grazing spots much more often than they used to before. Oh, dear, oh, dear, she thought, they are fattening me up! I am going to be slaughtered!

“Carabeef,” Bubu agreed with a sad shake of his head. And he picked insects off her hide in sympathy.

As Rosalinda felt herself getting heavier and heavier, it wasn’t her own bulk that made her push deeper into the ground with each step, but the weight of her dread. She woke up one cool morning resolved to do something – but, before she could make any plans, out came her master and his children and they started washing her with soap and water until her hide fairly gleamed.

Well, that was a bit strange, she thought, as they proceeded to bring out the wooden cart….

Before they could hitch her to it, however, Bubu landed on her back in a flurry of wings. “Quick!” he screeched. “Start running! He’s going to take you to the slaughterhouse!   Run or you’ll be carabeef!”

Now, carabaos don’t panic that quickly, but they can when they must, and so it was that the residents of the small town of La Paz were treated to the early morning spectacle of a fleeing carabao with a bewildered farmer and his brood of children running after it!

Rosalinda, in her panic, charged right into the town plaza, went round and round the fountain and, finally, feeling the heat of the midmorning sun, drank from it. Then, she tried to get into it and it was at this point that the town’s residents finally caught up with her.

“Tomas!,” the mayor called to her master. “Why is your carabao trying to get into the fountain?”

By this time, Rosalinda was realizing several things: One, that she couldn’t fit into the fountain; two, that all the people around her were finding something incredibly funny; and, three, that she didn’t know what she was going to do!

Unbeknownst to Rosalinda, who by then had been harnessed and was being pulled away from the fountain by a group of laughing men, it was the day before Christmas and she had been selected to be one of the animals for the town’s first attempt at a living nativity scene!

This she realized later on, when they made her stand on straw beside a spotted cow, several goats, and the mayor’s horse. The horse knew all about it and explained, rather condescendingly, the reason why the people in front of them were dressed in long robes and veils and had golden circles on their heads.

And, if you’re worried about Rosalinda’s future, don’t be – her master wasn’t fattening her up because she had an appointment at the abbatoir, but because she was going to help start off his new venture – carabao milk!