The following is an article from Uncle John's Bathroom Reader The World's Gone Crazy.
Cows just kind of do what they do; They stand in fields and graze and moo, But they also do other things that make us stop and say, “Ooh!” So here are some cow stories, strange but true.
I’M OK, YOU’RE OK. BUT WHAT ABOUT THE COW?
One morning in January 2005, traffic backed up on Interstate 4 near DeBary, Florida. The cause: A cow was standing in a swamp beside the road… and she appeared to be sinking. Concerned drivers called the Highway Patrol, who quickly determined that the cow wasn’t in danger, but was merely grazing in the two-foot-deep bog. The officers left, but the worried calls kept coming in, so they went back out and put up an electronic sign on the shoulder that read: “THE COW IS OK.” Shortly after the officers left, however, the cow wandered off …but the sign remained.
Now motorists were really confused: What cow was okay? Was this some kind of spiritual message, or news of some event they hadn’t heard about? Those were just a few of the questions the Highway Patrol received over the next few hours. And as more and more drivers slowed down to look for the nonexistent cow, a second, larger traffic jam ensued. Officers eventually went back out and removed the sign.
UDDER CHAOS
In December 2009, an Englishwoman arrived home in Blagdon, Somerset, to discover smashed roof tiles in her yard and serious damage to the top of her house. Fearing that someone had tried to break in, she called the police, who assessed the damage and started knocking on neighbors’ doors to inquire if they had seen anyone suspicious. William de Cothi, a teenager who lived next door, had seen the whole thing. He’d looked out his second-story window, he said, and a cow was standing on top of the woman’s slanted roof. The sight was so odd that he’d even taken a photo. Police determined that the cow must have jumped onto the roof at its lowest point -an impressive six feet off the ground- then walked around for a few minutes, broke a few tiles, and jumped off again.
A MOO-MOO HERE AND A ROAR-ROAR THERE
Jack McDonald’s landlady had a cow. Her name was Apple (because she liked to eat apples off a tree on the property). One day in 2008, a black bear wandered into Apple’s field in Hygiene, Colorado, and climbed up Apple’s apple tree. Apple ran to the tree and mooed sternly at the bear. It climbed back to the ground and the two animals stared each other down—and even touched noses for a brief moment. Then Apple mooed loudly and chased the bear away. McDonald described the confrontation as “hilarious.”
FIRE IN THE HOLE
A Dutch veterinarian was fined 600 guilders (about $240) for starting a fire that destroyed a farm near the town of Lichtenvoorde. The vet had been trying to demonstrate to a farmer that his cows were passing too much gas and, to make his point, he used a lighter to set fire to one of the cow’s farts. The cow became, according to newspaper reports, a “four-legged flamethrower,” and ran around frantically, setting hay bales on fire. The flaming cow (which, amazingly, was unharmed) caused more than $80,000 in damage.
COWLICKS
(Image credit: Flickr user Taylor Riché)
Jerry Lynn Davis’s house must taste very good. In 2009 one of his neighbor’s cows stuck her head through a fence next to Davis’s residence in Rogersville, Tennessee, and started licking the house. It licked the paint off the walls, ripped off a screen, broke a window, and tore down a rain gutter, all by licking. The cow’s owner agreed to move the fence back a few feet, and Davis tried to get his insurance company to pay for the damages (which exceeded $100), but was informed that his policy did not cover “acts of cow.”
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The article above is reprinted with permission from Uncle John's Bathroom Reader The World's Gone Crazy.
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