They Shoot Cows, Don't They?

Well, here is another horrible and very sad story, and it's about a cow.  I have never met a cow, personally, but I've seen pictures, and I think cows are kind of funny-looking animals, plus they are really big, even bigger than cane corsos!  But I have no reason to think cows are mean, and they don't even have sharp teeth to bite with, like dogs do.

Anyway, this sad story happened at the California State Fair last week, and there was a Holstein cow there, and she was black-and-white, which is the color of all Holstein cows, so of course she was very pretty, just like me, because I'm black-and-white, too!  And what I learned about Holstein cows is that they are specially bred to give milk, so they are very nice cows, because you wouldn't want to have to milk a mean cow all the time.

So this cow got taken to the California State Fair by some veterinarians from the University of California at Davis, and she was very pregnant.  And the idea was that she would have her calf right there at the fair, and people could watch to see how a calf gets born.  But when the cow was getting unloaded, she got away from her handlers, and she started roaming through the fairgrounds to see what was there, just like anybody would who went to the fair.

Then some police officers started following her in an SUV, and they said she was "agitated," but a vendor who saw her said she did not seem agitated.  And another vendor shot a little video of the cow, and it looked like she was only agitated when the SUV was right on her heels, which I think is how anybody would pretty much act if they were being chased by an SUV.

So the police couldn't seem to catch the cow, and there weren't any cowboys there to lasso her, and some people tried to lure her into a trailer with some hay and yummy cow food, but none of these things worked.  And then a veterinarian tried to shoot her with a tranquilizer dart gun, but the gun didn't work right.

And meanwhile, the cow really was getting agitated, and she started charging at people, which is cow-speak for "Back off and leave me alone!"  Then she charged at a policeman on a bicycle, and he jumped off the bike and ran away, and the cow trampled the bicycle.

So after an hour and a half of chasing the cow, the police asked the veterinarian if they could just shoot her, and he said yes.  So they shot her.  And then they shot her again and again and again, until they had shot her 11 times!  Which killed her really dead, and her calf was dead, too.  And they took her back to UC Davis so they could cut her open and look inside her.  I guess they thought that maybe there was something in there, like with the mama grizzly bear, that would explain why she was out running around in the fairgrounds.

And the news reports about this incident used words that made it sound like the cow was really scary and vicious.  Like, for instance, they said she was "running wild" instead of just "running loose."  And one or two said she was "on a rampage," which makes it sound like she was knocking over everything in sight, plus also killing people, too, but I don't think she was really doing that.  I think she was just a poor, innocent cow who ended up being someplace she didn't want to be, and she didn't know how to get back to her nice barn, where she was used to being.

But like I told you before, I never really met a cow, so I don't know much about them or about how hard they are to catch or how dangerous they are if they are upset because their calf has to be born at the state fair with lots of people watching.  I just wish this story could have had a much nicer, happier ending.