It seems that Moses just can’t get away from that calf. Last week in a manger in rural Connecticut a calf was born. The calf is brown rather than golden, but it bears a distinctly cross-shaped white marking on its forehead. The owner suspects it might be a divine message, but he’s not sure what the message is. The children of the area named the calf Moses.

Does this all fall into the category of coincidence? Or is it indeed a long-awaited sign from on high? It does fall a bit on the C.E. side of the long-expected red heifer, but it looks like it just gamboled out of a bovine White Ash Wednesday service. And it was born in December! In a manger! (Or at least the present-day equivalent of one.) He bears the name of the arch-nemesis of venerated calves — Moses, the solemn monotheist. Even the chair of the Dairy Sciences Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison declares the Catholic birthmark to be unique.

All in all, I think the farmer got it right. If divine messages come in the form of calves, we’ve got a serious mixed-signal problem down here. The greatest crime, according the book of Kings, that the Northern Kingdom of Israel perpetrated was the erecting of a set of golden calves. And the sign we get is a denominationally confused calf? Perhaps the appropriate question at this juncture would be, “how now, brown cow?”

Photo credit: Aaron Flaum, Associated Press