‘Far Side’ Fans Freak Out As the ‘Cow Tools’ Prophecy Is Finally Fulfilled
We finally understand the single most confounding Far Side panel that Gary Larson ever put to paper. “Cow Tools” wasn’t a punchline — it was a prediction.
Throughout the legendary, 15-year run of Larson’s idiosyncratic and often inscrutable comic strip series The Far Side, the cartoonist's borderline obsession with the bovine subfamily was a constant theme, as well as the cause of the series’ biggest controversy. In 1982, the fandom of the surreal, science-fiction-adjacent comic series erupted in uproar upon the publication of a Far Side strip so infamous that it has its own Wikipedia Page: “Cow Tools,” a single panel showing a bipedal cow examining a table of crude, oddly shaped instruments with nothing more than the title explaining the scene, remains the most divisive half-meme, half-myth that Larson ever unintentionally unleashed on his fans.
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Given how the legacy of “Cow Tools” is characterized by a complete disbelief that Larson’s joke was as simple as, “if cows had tools they would look like this,” many Far Side fans found themselves in shock and amazement when this video of a remarkably intelligent bovine grabbing a stick with its teeth and using it to scratch its crotch went viral late last week:
Apparently, cattle are quite capable of manipulating their environments to achieve their goals, and farmers have long reported that their cows can and do use tools when there’s a particularly nagging itch in an area that their anatomy tragically doesn’t allow them to scratch. However, to see an astoundingly intelligent bovine like the one pictured in the above video actually pick up an implement that perfectly resembles the instrument depicted in “Cow Tools” is absolutely uncanny.
When “Cow Tools” first provoked Far Side fans to call in to their local newspapers and complain that, clearly, the publication had errantly edited out an important detail from the panel that would help them make sense of the strip, Larson put out a rare public statement and explained to his confused and concerned fans that, well, he just really likes cows.
“The cartoon was intended to be an exercise in silliness. While I have never met a cow who could make tools, I felt sure that if I did, they (the tools) would lack something in sophistication and resemble the sorry specimens shown in this cartoon,” Larson admitted in his press release. “I regret that my fondness for cows, combined with an overactive imagination, may have carried me beyond what is comprehensible to the average Far Side reader.”
Even at the time, some of those average Far Side readers felt that Larson’s explanation wasn’t good enough, and there must be some hidden meaning in “Cow Tools” that he was inexplicably hiding from his audience. Well, clearly, there really was a secret message in “Cow Tools” — and the cows have finally caught it.
