Saturday 23 June 2012

Cows, what are they good for.

So much for a nice quite run in the countryside.
I'd just started off when I narrowly avoided getting stung by a wasp, and at first i thought this was a good omen for my run, as last year I went through a stage of colliding with wasps and coming out worst!
Next I had to dodge about 15 trials bikers who were sharing the same path as me, so in a bid to get out of their way I decided to go cross country and run along some of the muddy fields.  Bad move.  I don't seem to have a lot of luck with animals when I'm out running, I love animals, but they don't seem to love me; dogs bite me, ones even knocked me over before, horses have charged at me (that's happened 3 times now) and cows have stampeded towards me, but luckily Cols always been around to make me feel safe, and to drag me out of the way, and under hedges, as I have a tendency to freeze and stay rooted to the spot.  This time I was on my own, and as I approached a field that was full of cows (it never normally is) I decided that it would be safest for everybody if I stopped running and walked.  The cows by and large seemed more scared of me than I was of them and bolted into the second field, which would have been helpful, if that wasn't where I was heading too.  As I crossed the second field I was relieved to see that most of them skitted out of my path and headed up field.  Yes, most of them.  A bull decided that it wasn't afraid of me and started walking  very purposefully in my direction, that was just the signal they needed for all of them to rush over at the same second, I've never seen cows move so quickly, although to be honest I've never moved so quickly either, thankfully I was right next to the style, and I jumped over, and then just shook and shook. 
People generally tend to laugh when you say that you scared of cows, but I've had a few really scary incidents now, and they seem to be being reported in the media with a greater frequency.  Last week there was an article in the Guardian by a farmer who had been trapped under a cow and thought he was going to die, thankfully he's alright now, but he wondered if the increase of incidents was to do with the changing cow's diets. I think the biggest worry for me is that potentially aggressive cows are put in big fields which are public rights of way, if there is a problem, you can be stuck in the middle of a very big field with no means of escape, and I don't want to be Moo-dy or cow-ardly but I don't think a cows hoof print is quite as lucky as a horseshoe. 

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