What's that tool, Charlie Brown?

So, the joke is cows are stupid. Gotcha.

Larson admitted that he screwed up by making one of the tools vaguely resemble a handsaw, which led countless readers to assume they could decipher the comic if they could only figure out what the other three tools were supposed to be.

Clearly the one to the left of the “handsaw” is some sort of back scratcher.

Lots of his cartoons are slightly (or highly) anthropomorphized animals and the point is always the incongruities that result. The bears that know about firearms, the suburbanite deer who live in houses but are still legit targets for human hunters, etc.

So maybe the point isn’t that cows are stupid, but maybe we’re too stupid to recognize what tools a tool-making cow would want. Modulo the challenges of making tools when you’re a hoofed quadruped.

Looks more like a hawk to me.

No, it’s a toy piano with black keys painted on. The joke is that S is such a virtuoso he can play real music on a toy piano.

As seen in the piano’s very first appearance.

He can also get Wurlitzer organ sounds for Xmas tunes.