A charming shot Diane............and a lovely story :-)

Thank you, Keith. I am so glad I saw the man, because I would be flustered trying to figure out how to get her back inside. I had already knocked on the door of a house, but no answer.

Cows are very empathic. They have a lot more intelligence than they are given credit for.

They do, kind of like elephants in that way. In this case, they were practically frantic about this one calf. They're all facing toward it and I had the feeling they were yelling at me to do something. Oh, probably not, but it made my day.

Thanks, Pam!

Interesting, I guess I don't "read" cows well. When I see them loose on the road where they shouldn't be, they seem to have no care for the one's that are close to danger.

This was a special case - a baby! They do go bonkers over the little ones. I'm not sure they'd raise such a fuss over an adult. Maybe I'm a little bit Temple Grandin-ish.

I had an interesting experience with cattle decades ago. As a young telecoms technician I was at a remote section repeater site on a new underground cable for its acceptance testing. The manhole was in a paddock. I noticed there were some cattle off in the distance as I walked the 100m or so in from the road, having been dropped there by the other tech who was taking our test gear equipped van to the next site which was adjacent to the road.

After the 3/4 of an hour or so down the 3m deep hole and testing completed I climbed up to go back to the road to wait for the other tech to return. I found I was entirely circled by around 70 cattle all facing the manhole. They were all shoulder to shoulder facing me with some calves moving around a little but being 'controlled' by the others so they didn't get much away from the circle.

I was a bit apprehensive at first but soon realised their motivation was probably curiosity. I waited for a few minutes then slowly walked back towards the road. The cattle moved to let me through and as I went through the fence they dispersed and mostly went back to eating. It was both weird and wonderful.

Oh, Graham, they way you describe it makes me see a magical scene. A combination of somber and comical! Thank you for that treat!

'Magical' seems a good adjective too. I might put this in as a blog. Sadly no photos to scan as my camera bag was in the vehicle.

Aw, that would have made some fantastic photos! Yes, put it in a blog! Do you know of the brilliant Dr. Temple Grandin? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_Grandin
She has changed how many ranchers handle cattle and written books about animal welfare and autism (she's autistic). An idol of mine. ;-)


Photo from: www.impactingourfuture.com/advocacy/see-no-evil-designing-around-animals-needs