Cows may safely graze

England is laced with public right of ways.  As you amble through the countryside, you rarely encounter a fenced field that doesn't have a gate or stile through which you, a member of the public, have a right to enter the field, emerging at a similar exit on the other side.  For your part, you don't trample growing crops and you don't annoy the animals.

But what if the animals choose to annoy you?

This week, an elderly, retired professor from Magdalen College, Oxford, was out for a walk in Essex -- the sort of daily walk he probably has taken most of his life.  The sort of walk I took through Westmorland these past couple of weeks.

According to a British newspaper, there were cows grazing in the field.  The cows "became agitated and charged at him."  The professor was heard screaming for help.  He was trampled to death before help could arrive.

A tragic and puzzling story.  Agitated cows?  Charging?  I would hardly have believed it, but for my own experience the first day of my hike, while still in northern Westmorland.  Like the professor, I entered a large field, climbing over a stile.  Cows were scattered about in widely separated groups. My route took me within a hundred feet of one such group.

I've walked past many cows in my life.  Cows either stare at me blankly, or continue grazing, or move slightly away.  But these cows were curious.  They began slowly moving toward me.  I didn't stop to interact and, at this point, hardly noticed them.  I had located the stile on the far fence, and was aiming toward it.  But the cows were aiming at me.  They weren't running; they didn't appear "agitated."  But they were closing in on me. I thought it was a bit funny, in both senses of the word, but still wasn't concerned.

Then I noticed cows farther afield.  They were beginning to move in paths that would intercept my own.  Not hastily.  But deliberately.  The cows behind were now close behind.  The cows afield were joining those behind.  I was walking faster.  So were the cows.  They were breathing just behind my ears.  The original five or six cows had swelled to a much larger number.

I felt like the Pied Piper of Westmorland.  But the "children" I was leading seemed less than innocent.

I reached the stile with hot cow breath on my neck.  I skipped up and over the ladder and looked back.  The cows had come as far as they could.  They were clustered around the stile, staring at me.  I took the photo above.  The photo doesn't do justice to the number of cows outside its frame.  The cows didn't look malicious.  Or murderous.  They didn't look much of anything.  They didn't really seem cow-like.

As Bucky Katt said in one of his incisive observations, the cows appeared to be staring at me, "thinking stupid cow thoughts."  No doubt the cows that trampled the Magdalen professor emeritus looked equally stupid and placid, thinking cow thoughts, while walking back and forth over his body. 

I wasn't scared.  My heart wasn't pounding, although maybe it should have been.  I just felt unnerved.  I felt relieved that I'd had no problem crossing the stile.