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Call that a Cow, this is a Cow.

 marv335 wrote:
12 people have been killed by cows in the last 6 years in the UK, they're dangerous beasts.

If they're like the one that made the news the other year, it's because they've done things like walking their dogs through the cow field when they've got young calves. Use common sense.

 Tannhauser42 wrote:
A cow loose on the roads? That's, like, a daily thing here in Texas. You either drive around it or see who can make better "moo" sounds.

This is a true statement. I have had the misfortune of actually hitting a cow when I lived in Texas.

Lets trake a trip down Memory Lane.. Lane.. ane.. ane.. ne...

It was graduation night, 2002 (aging myself, making some feel old and others feel young i guess), and I borrowed my Mom's 2001 (it was brand spanking new, had maybe 1500 miles on it) Chrysler PT Cruiser. Normally I would have been in my truck but the brakes needed replacing so I borrowed Mom's car.

After the graduation dinner, I left my house (rural Texas, Freeport to be more precise) to head on over to my girlfriend's house for celebration. As her and I were driving along we spotted a white cow that was wondering along the road, to which I did exactly what Tannhauser42 said above, and Moo'd at it a few times until it got off the road. Funny thing is I remember telling my girlfriend that someone was going to hit that damned thing because it is super dark in rural Texas when its cloudy at night, and off we went to her house.

Fast forward to a few hours later, around 3:30 am, and I am on my way home from her house (in case anyone is wondering, I was completely sober). Now there was 2 ways to get home, one way took you down a "closed to thru traffic" cutoff road that skipped about 15 minutes of freeway, the other was the freeway. Guess which one I took? Now this road was about 5 miles long, 2 lanes wide with no shoulder (just wide enough for 2 cars not to touch mirrors in passing), and arrow straight, with large stormwater drainage ditches on both sides that went from 5 feet to about 20 ft deep where they dumped into a bayou. After several people died in auto accidents, racing, drunk driving etc, on this stretch they closed it to through traffic and only residents could use it.

The direction I was coming from was the end with the deeper ditches, and I was doing about 55 or so since it was so early in the morning there was absolutely no traffic. I was cruising along, doing about 20 over the speed limit, and out of my right peripheral vision I see a white flash coming out of the ditch. I had enough time to yell "Oh SHH" (this is not trying to get around the language filter, this is literally all I had time to get out) and nudge the wheel to the left before "SLAM" and airbags. The car (much to it's credit) stayed straight and I was able to come to a stop pretty quickly.

At first, I had absolutely no idea what had just happened, and the first thing that came to my mind was how I was going to try and fix my Mom's car so she wouldn't find out I hit something. Still in a daze I realised it was 4 in the morning on a Sunday and none of the parts stores would be open. Shortly after, I got my senses about me and realised none of that was going to happen because the airbags deployed and the car was jacked, and figured out I had just hit a damn cow!

I check myself and everything seems fine, nothing broken, nothing hurts just really freaked the hell out about what had just happened. Since this was before everyone and their mothers had cell phones, and I was in the middle of no-where, I needed to find someone with a phone, so I start heading up the road in front of the car, where the one remaining good headlight was illuminating a mailbox. Down the driveway, about 200 yards, there was an aging single-wide mobile home, with no lights on except a dimly lit (damn thing could have been a 25w bulb with how dark it was) porch light. Still a bit freaked out I ran down to the house and started banging on the door. This wasn't polite knocking, I am suprised the owner didn't shoot me from the other side. After banging for what felt like an eternity a man finally yelled from behind the closed door: "Who the hell are you, and why are you banging on my door!?". I yelled back: "I need to borrow a phone, I just hit a cow in front of your house and need to call my parents and the police!". The guy never did open his door but told me he had already called the police and I could wait outside (nice fellow).

About 15 minutes later 4 police, an ambulance, and a firetruck show up and start checking me out, and finally let me use the phone to call my parents. Of course when my parents showed up my Dad was pissed and my Mom was concerned, but other than some glass in my hair I was fine, and EMTs let me go without a hospital trip.

Now for the juicy parts:

One of the Sheriffs that showed up answered some of my parents questions, and when asked about the cow, replied that most of him was up in the road, and the rest was in the ditch, I had actually cut him in half. He also noted that were it not for my quick flick to the left it would have been head on and would have been a whole different situation. As it was, I hit him with the right fender about 3/4 of the way down his body, which caused his head to smack the windshield (which left a very "circle" hole amongst the spiderwebs of broken glass) and the cow to roll up the passenger side A-pillar and land on the roof of the car about mid way down, before rolling off the back. The car itself was totalled, estimates later that week were over $13k to fix. The front right fender and hood were smooshed flat with the fender pushed into the tire. The A-piller was bent inwards and the roof of the car was smooshed down a few inches along the entire car from center line to the doors, and none of the doors on that side would open, including the rear lift door. The only piece of glass left intact was the driver side window.

The kicker to all this is the cow that I hit, was the same damn cow I saw earlier in the night at the other end of the road, the one I had commented that someone was going to hit.

The sheriff on scene let me go without a ticket for driving down the closed road, which was nice, and I went home, with a furious Dad, and a still concerned Mom.

Moral of this story, if I had gotten out earlier in the evening and just shot the damned thing like in this story, none of this would have happened.

Addendum to your story: Never turn down free steaks!

Glad you made it out okay... that'd scare the bejeebus of anyone.

Saw the aftermath of a Toyota truck get taking out by a Arabian horse in Iraq.
This ends well being no one claimed the horse and it winded up with the vet outfit in BIAP. Like three broke legs and believe one of the officers was a ranch owner so he knew his way around a horse. Horse is now in Kuwait being I helped coordinate the move there

 welshhoppo wrote:
Call that a Cow, this is a Cow.

Aren't cows, you know, female?
That one isn't...

 Skinnereal wrote:

 welshhoppo wrote:
Call that a Cow, this is a Cow.

Aren't cows, you know, female?
That one isn't...

Excuse me, but it's plain wrong to assign genders to animals that cannot communicate their preferred pronouns. Please use gender-neutral terms when referring to them in the future.

Are we gonna see photos of the cow when he was a calf on the news? Are we also gonna hear about how he was a good boyou heading off to cow college?

 sarpedons-right-hand wrote:
And that is why I love being English..

It does seem a touch extreme though does it not? As my work colleague just said 'That's a bit feckin' tight innit?'

And a waste of money. A helicopter and six marksmen?! They send less for a manhunt for gods sake. Living in the country like I do, you see cows on the road all the time. It's just a case of getting out of the car and shooing it back in the general direction of the nearest field. Those city folk have no idea

Damn! No crime in England if those kind of resources can be pumped into a cow hunt. I would have thought farmer McGee and his dog, Wags would have been enough.

Not just I England! In Scotland, we shoot cows just because they want a swim!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-28105954

Beats fish in a barrel...

 Avatar 720 wrote:

 Skinnereal wrote:

 welshhoppo wrote:
Call that a Cow, this is a Cow.

Aren't cows, you know, female?
That one isn't...

Excuse me, but it's plain wrong to assign genders to animals that cannot communicate their preferred pronouns. Please use gender-neutral terms when referring to them in the future.

"Female" has always been used to describe biological gender, you're confusing it with "woman", which according to the theory you're satirizing is a social construct.

Gender Studies aside, I think we can all see that the creature in question is male.



Hoooo boy.

"Creature" is right. It may have some sort of bovine ancestry, but it looks more like an Everblight Warbeast than anything I'd expect to see in a field.

 AndrewGPaul wrote:
"Creature" is right. It may have some sort of bovine ancestry, but it looks more like an Everblight Warbeast than anything I'd expect to see in a field.

Meanwhile, in Texas:
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2015/06/01/old-west-cattle-drive-leads-200-animals-to-safety-in-texas-after-floodwaters/

 welshhoppo wrote:
Call that a Cow, this is a Cow.

Ahh the British/Belgian Blue. These monsters are bred purely for beef and as such are almost all muscle bound behemoths.

I remember my days in the agricultural industry when we where each assigned a calf to train for the show. I was the poor sod that got the only BB and I tell you now I hated it. The first thing that little (4'ish tall) beast did was to run straight across the yard with yours truly being dragged behind, hanging on for dear life. It took over a month to break that monster in and I avowed never to tangle with a fully grown one.

Now loose cows here in Japan, had an encounter with a boar once when i was on my bike driving back from work.