It's a common thing in the US, not unlike birdwatching. My grandfather loved going out and watching for cows. Then he would come home and tell us all about the cows he saw. Did you know there are like, 150 native species of cow in the US? Back in the early days you could just go out and get milk from wild cows. Now, however, they're overexploited and so you rarely see wild cows.
The "absurd" is usually the whole joke with Far Side. I grew up around cows, too. They're so dumb and mundane, he plays on that a lot.
When I was a kid, we had a state park near our house. We would go there and there would be these Japanese tourists abandoning their cars to go try to hand feed deer. To me, they're just a pest that eats our garden. But to the tourists, they were amazed.
I didnt get it until I visited Yellowstone and we abandoned our car to chase a bull moose (which is dangerously dumb, don't do it.)