The uninformed have been known to suggest that cows are stupid and lazy but there’s plenty of evidence to the contrary.
News stories in other media, kindly supplied by colleagues who know this editor’s weakness for a good cow story, indicate cattle are as smart as they need to be and busier that you’d expect.
In southern California, cows are busy attacking people.
A Los Angeles Times story earlier this month told of a woman hiking in an open range area east of Oakland, California, “when she came upon a mother cow and her newly dropped calf. The protective cow charged. The next thing (the woman) knew, she was flying through the air, crash-landing in a barbed wire fence.”
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The same story told of a man who crusades against grazing on public lands. He reported that he was “chased by six different cows at different times over about a 20-minute period.” Oh, and did I forget to mention? He had two dogs with him.
It appears certain Californians are under the mistaken impression that domestication has removed natural instincts in cattle to protect themselves and their young.
Cows are also known to produce copious amounts of manure. Residents near Ferndale, Washington, are glad they do. Sort of.
An August report from Associated Press, published in the High Plains Journal, told of a brush and shavings fire extinguished through the application of wet cow poop.
“Desperate times call for desperate measures,” AP quoted fire chief Larry Hoffman as saying. The chief acknowledged complaints about the unusual maneuvre – “we’re not the most popular department in town” – but said the manure squelched the blaze. He also noticed an odour he described thus: “In your worst nightmare, if you can imagine burning manure combined with a brush fire, this sort of woody undertone.”
Confusing Calfornians and fighting fires in Ferndale – what will cows do next? You guessed it – protect public decency.
Reuters News Service reported earlier this month that Highland heifers have been turned loose in a nature preserve near Spaarnwoude, The Netherlands, to discourage amorous couples from sampling entirely too much of the altogether.
Faced with complaints about public indecency, the town turned out the heifers and saw “an unexpectedly serendipitous reduction in sex prowlers after allowing the cows to graze in its fields,” said Reuters.
The story does not examine the reasons behind the success of this ploy. However, a review of the first two examples in this column might provide clues.
