Cowcow

This toy will forever make me think of "Cowcow" from the second chapter (entitled "The Sacred Cow") of Possible Side Effects by Augusten Burroughs because I had just read that chapter right before I met Lucy and her toy cow. The chapter begins as follows:

"Bentley is our French bulldog and his favorite toy is a ratty stuffed cow that emits a sickly, warbling 'moooooo' noise when it's tipped upside down, or in his mouth while he shakes his head violently from side to side. The name we've given the toy is 'Cowcow' and Bentley knows it. If you tell him to 'get Cowcow' he will run to his toy basket and select the cow. Not the crackle cat or the chicken head or the bone wheel or any of the other toys. Although he will get these, too, if you ask him.

And while Bentley is a very jolly, small animal, I couldn't help but feel his life would be better if he had a real, live Cowcow to play with."

I'll let you read the rest for yourself, but the chapter is hilarious and a little bit adorable. I'll have to hold off on my review of the book as a whole because I'm only about a 1/5 of the way into it. However, I'm pretty certain that this is what my review will be in a nutshell: funny, entertaining - and doesn't even belong in the same hemisphere as Running With Scissors. But - the fact that he's already written RWS (and we therefore know a little bit about the guy telling the stories) makes this book much better than if it had been written without that background. I'll let you know if that review changes once I finish it. (In addition, if you haven't read RWS, read it. It's unbelievable.)