Friday, August 29, 2008

More Evidence for Animal Magnetism

Those pesky cows. Every Kentucky farm in the 1940’s had a cow. Ours was pretty scary, an ill tempered witch of a beast, more so if you happened to be only 4 years old. My brother and I were chased more than once, fast as our little feet would take us across the pasture.

Fast forward sixty years to Hadrian’s Wall country where we walked through cow pasture after cow pasture. Mostly peaceful beasts they were until we came near Bowness-on-Solway. Lord, I think they were reincarnations of that Kentucky cow, come back to get vengance for those times Ray and I climbed over the fence into her pasture.
Methane belching cows are a major factor in global warming. Deforestation for pastures, feed fertilizers and cow burps of methane, twenty three times more potent than carbon dioxide, are a greater threat to climate change than all the world’s transportation.

And now -- this just out -- the beasts align in a north-south direction when grazing or resting - do they do anything else? - according to this week's Proceedings for the National Academy of Sciences.

Had I known I wouldn't have been so worried walking across England when we couldn't figure out how to use Joan's GPS.

3 comments:

Pat said...

So maybe we just thought they were coming after us...we were walking east to west, they were aligned along north-south axis - we were bound to intersect!

Sonnjea said...

They don't look too threatening...

Katharine said...

Sonnjea - Take my word. That last bunch had steak on their minds, and it wasn't beef steak.