Yawnee Valley is a place of pastoral beauty and is full of cows. There are so many cows that, in 1836, citizens elected a cow as mayor and later erected a statue in its honor. Cows moo less than 100 times daily. Yawnee Valley is a good place for people who love cows, but Miles Murphy does not like cows.

Miles Murphy rides in the car with his mother Judy, and he is sad because they are moving away from their home near the sea to Yawnee Valley. Judy encourages her son to be excited about his new room and backyard, but Miles misses his friends, his apartment, Max’s Market where he buys his favorite candy, and his role at school as an expert prankster. He looks out the window and sees the town welcome sign which shows the town population is 9,980 and reads: “Come look at our cows” (6).

Everything in Miles’s new room feels unfamiliar and he cannot sleep. At his old apartment, he could hear the ocean from his window. Now, he thinks, “The air outside his old room smelled like the sea. This air smelled like cows” (8).