Sunday, September 15, 2013

Hamburger Revenge

Heh - watching this video, it's clear that Glen Campbell doesn't have a clue about how to ride. Now there's a metaphor... uh - unless he is riding like that on purpose...


I saw this a while back & filed it away. Since it's a fairly slow news weekend, I thought i'd go ahead and write about it. It seems that in the UK, there was some cows that attacked and killed a guy that was 'just walking' through their field. Yikes! We are not talking about a bull, but just plain old cows. 

Now I will admit, I have had suspicions about cows all my life. When I was a kid we would visit my grandfather's farm. Yes - that grandfather that I posted about when I first started blogging. One the 'chores' we would have when visiting was to join my grandfather early in the morning feeding the cows. He would summon us downstairs by yelling up 'Time to get out of the hay - those cows aren't going to feed themselfs'. We would tumble downstairs and select an old stetson from the rack - an array of which i'm sure they put out only when we came visiting - and pile into the back of the pickup. Oddly enough we only wore hats like that when visiting. In our suburban home, such accouterments were generally frowned on by my mother. Breakfast of course was only eaten after the cows were fed.

Feeding was generally great fun as we would get to climb up in the barn and throw down hay into the pickup. Then we would ride around in the back on top of the hay, taking turns to jump out and open & close gates as he negotiated the fields. For amusement he would wait until the gate closer had almost got to the pickup, then start pulling away, requiring a running jump to the tailgate or a long walk back to the house. Once the pickup was empty of hay, he would pick his bumpiest road, and negotiate that, as we all attempted to not get bounced out. Great fun.  'Child car seat' was definitely not a part of his vernacular.

One we got to the cows, we cut the bales and droped them into the feeders for the eating pleasure of the waiting bovines. We would also dump supplements in the form of what my grandfather called 'cake' into feeding troughs, which the cows really liked. This required you to mingle nose to nose with the cows as you had to turn over the troughs to knock out the poop, then pour the buckets of 'cake' in with 'hungry' cows nosing in around you. Imagine the fun of sending in a 10 year old suburban boy with dozens of 1000 pound cows crowding around him, carrying a bucket of 'cake' he could hardly lift. That was character building.

So I guess you could say that I have a passing familiarity with live cows. That being said, I must admit that there were times, as the cows crowded around the feeder and troughs in anticipation of the bales of hay or cake, that they looked capable of murder with that wide eyed glare they are so good at. 

But capable or not, they just aren't really too smart. If they were, you would think that when it came time for herding them into the 'squeeze chute' for branding and castrating, it would be an impossible job. My grandfather did not bring in a vet for that task, just a very sharp pocket knife. I am hoping he cleaned it before cutting up apples for a snack. And kicking or punching them to get them to move back really does no good, and according to my grandfather was 'a good way to hurt your foot'. Of course he also used the term 'cutting your foot' when you stepped into a pile of cow manure, which confused me for longer than I care to admit.

Getting back to the above story, it turns out that the walkers had a dog with them and that was what the cows were going after. That makes sense as dogs are generally disliked by cows and, at least in the UK, are probably their primary predator in the form of wild dogs. Other than that, I can't imagine they were much a real threat. Common sense would dictate that if you were venturing into their field with a dog, that you keep it on a leash - but then common sense is not always as common as you might think.

As for a celebrity that you wouldn't think has riding skills but actually does, consider this guy:



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