Me and my girlfriend like to go walking. Sometimes trails pass through farmland or grazing areas and sometimes you'll find cows in these.
Cows are scary.
Most people think of them as big dumb docile creatures who spend most of their time stationary, eating grass and occasionally mooing. From a distance this may be true, but get a bit closer and this can be a very different story.
The picture above was taken on a hill trail, but I'm not on the trail, the cow is, I'm skirting the trail by about 15 meters because the cow wouldn't let us pass any closer.
Cows are scary.
Most people think of them as big dumb docile creatures who spend most of their time stationary, eating grass and occasionally mooing. From a distance this may be true, but get a bit closer and this can be a very different story.
The picture above was taken on a hill trail, but I'm not on the trail, the cow is, I'm skirting the trail by about 15 meters because the cow wouldn't let us pass any closer.
Here's my girlfriend a little bit further down the hill, note that she's most definitely not on a trail either.
These pictures were actually taken about a year ago, what reminded me of them was another cow-related incident that took place just last week near Hadrians wall. The walk we were on lead us from a town along a river, through some largely empty farmland and then along Hadrians wall itself. After following the wall for a while we split off through some more farmland back towards the town.
Unfortunately this farmland was occupied. The first few fields were pretty much fine, the animals went about their business and we went about ours, one of them was ankle deep in shit at one point, but we had our boots on so that was ok albeit stinky. Problems arose in what turned out would have been the second to last field (so close!). There were some cows in the field, but we thought nothing of it since we'd crossed through cow fields already and the cows in those fields seemed pretty cool with us passing through. We started at the top of the field and worked our way towards the bottom, the bottom of the field was completely water logged, unfortunately and to my cost I only discovered this by walking right into the waterlogged ground thus emerging both my boots and water-logging them - just what I needed. (in my defence btw it wasn't that I wasn't paying attention to the ground, but the water-logging was masked by long grass)
We realised we'd have to walk around the water-logged area to reach the gate - a gate which was guarded by a cow. As we approached the gate the cow guarding the gate noticed us and ploughed through the water-logged ground on the far side of the gate and watched us from a distance. Once we'd reached the gate we realised it was completely surrounded by water-logged ground 6-10ft wide and we wouldn't be going through that gate any time soon. And that's when the cows started getting uppity.
Now I say cows, but these might actually have been young bulls, they were smallish and had one horn each, the other seemingly removed.
Anyhoo the cow/bull from the gate charged at us, but stopped when I turned towards it. It's about this time I started shitting my pants. We had to get back to the far gate we came in by and by now cow/bull had assembled his/her buddies and were menacing us. We started walking calmly back towards the other gate when the assembled herd with gate cow/bull at its head, my girlfriend panicked and ran herself into the water-logging. Again turning towards the cow/bulls halted them. I told my girlfriend NOT TO FUCKING RUN! and we headed towards a section of the wall replaced with fencing it looked like we could climb with the cow/bulls in hot pursuit. As long as I kept facing them (and waving my walking pole maniacally) the cow/bulls they would slow down or stop, thus keeping them back far enough for us to get over the fence.
Now I don't know if the cow/bulls were actually threatening us or just looking for food or something, but when an animal bigger than you with a horn charges at you then you don't stand there and wait to see if it stops and licks your hand or gores you to death, you just shit your pants and get out of there. Shitting pants optional.
So beware kiddies, Cows are Scary.
freedoms_stain, changing his pants, out.
These pictures were actually taken about a year ago, what reminded me of them was another cow-related incident that took place just last week near Hadrians wall. The walk we were on lead us from a town along a river, through some largely empty farmland and then along Hadrians wall itself. After following the wall for a while we split off through some more farmland back towards the town.
Unfortunately this farmland was occupied. The first few fields were pretty much fine, the animals went about their business and we went about ours, one of them was ankle deep in shit at one point, but we had our boots on so that was ok albeit stinky. Problems arose in what turned out would have been the second to last field (so close!). There were some cows in the field, but we thought nothing of it since we'd crossed through cow fields already and the cows in those fields seemed pretty cool with us passing through. We started at the top of the field and worked our way towards the bottom, the bottom of the field was completely water logged, unfortunately and to my cost I only discovered this by walking right into the waterlogged ground thus emerging both my boots and water-logging them - just what I needed. (in my defence btw it wasn't that I wasn't paying attention to the ground, but the water-logging was masked by long grass)
We realised we'd have to walk around the water-logged area to reach the gate - a gate which was guarded by a cow. As we approached the gate the cow guarding the gate noticed us and ploughed through the water-logged ground on the far side of the gate and watched us from a distance. Once we'd reached the gate we realised it was completely surrounded by water-logged ground 6-10ft wide and we wouldn't be going through that gate any time soon. And that's when the cows started getting uppity.
Now I say cows, but these might actually have been young bulls, they were smallish and had one horn each, the other seemingly removed.
Anyhoo the cow/bull from the gate charged at us, but stopped when I turned towards it. It's about this time I started shitting my pants. We had to get back to the far gate we came in by and by now cow/bull had assembled his/her buddies and were menacing us. We started walking calmly back towards the other gate when the assembled herd with gate cow/bull at its head, my girlfriend panicked and ran herself into the water-logging. Again turning towards the cow/bulls halted them. I told my girlfriend NOT TO FUCKING RUN! and we headed towards a section of the wall replaced with fencing it looked like we could climb with the cow/bulls in hot pursuit. As long as I kept facing them (and waving my walking pole maniacally) the cow/bulls they would slow down or stop, thus keeping them back far enough for us to get over the fence.
Now I don't know if the cow/bulls were actually threatening us or just looking for food or something, but when an animal bigger than you with a horn charges at you then you don't stand there and wait to see if it stops and licks your hand or gores you to death, you just shit your pants and get out of there. Shitting pants optional.
So beware kiddies, Cows are Scary.
freedoms_stain, changing his pants, out.
No comments:
Post a Comment