By Sheila Bender

“Did you see the Harrycoos out to our left as we passed?”

“No,” we told the taxi driver taking us from our ferry landing on the Isle of Skye to Kyle Lochalsh on the mainland in the Scottish Highlands.

“Want me to turn around to show you? We have time before your train to Inverness.”

“We’d rather just keep going,” my husband said. I wondered what outcropping of rocks we missed.

Then the driver swung one arm in circles as he drove, saying they were all around the Isle of Skye, so we thought they might be birds. He said they were usually ruddy or black but also dun, and sometimes white. So, we kept our eyes focused out the taxi window on the lookout for the Harrycoos, until the driver said there were more of them to see through the left side. And there they were, long locks down past their eyes and over their necks and chests, even down to their tails, the original Highland species before interbreeding with cows from Europe, the hairy cows.

My husband and I had argued that morning as we did more than several times a week, because of conflicting travel strategies. My husband said the long hair must have protected the cows from rain and cold. I looked at the unshaved whiskers crawling up his cheeks, thinking how much his autism requires for protection from precipitation in the valley of our differences. Might we learn to call time-outs with a word and laugh at the circling birds of our misunderstandings? Harrycoos, I could say. Harrycoos, he might answer.   

© 2025 Sheila Bender

Sheila Bender founded WritingItReal in 2002 to facilitate those who write from personal experience. Her current books include Writing Personal Essays: Sharing and Shaping Your Life Experience and Since Then: Poems and Short Prose. She enjoys her role as an instructor for Women on Writing and Il Chiostro as well as with Writing It Real. You can learn about her at WritingItReal.com and sheilabender.substack.com.

To read about Sheila’s writing retreat with Brenda Miller in Italy in September 2026, read this post on True Stories Well Told. I’ll be there.