A FINE WELCOME

The National Arts Festival is currently being hosted here and this welcoming committee was patiently waiting at one of the main entrances to our town.

The rest of the Urban Herd were grazing further up the hill. This particular group of cattle have been in the area for the past week. Yesterday some of them wandered into this road in the face of oncoming traffic. Festival visitors who are clearly unused to sharing main roads with farm animals merely press their hooters and swerve out of the way without slowing down. I keep hoping the animals won’t do this at night for our street lights do not always shine.

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CHASING THOSE URBAN COWS

The Urban Herd (one of them) was at it again: invading a suburb and chomping anything green they could find. We came across this woman chasing a herd of about forty of them away from her home, using a floor mop!

The cows didn’t seem too perturbed. Most ambled down the street, while a smaller group broke off to munch at decorative shrubs planted outside the gates of a home. The woman persevered.

Hoping to avoid them altogether, we turned down a side road – only to meet the herd at the next corner.

This one decided to turn the tables on us and refused to budge, so we had to turn tail and drive the other way!

NOTE: Click on a photograph if you wish to see a larger view.

AND STILL THEY COME

The Urban Herd continues to expand – there seems to be no intention by the municipality to curb their intrusion into the urban area. Here a small group is peacefully chewing the cud in open land on the outskirts of the suburb I live in. While they look relaxed and comfortable in the late afternoon light, they would have wandered through the town and up the hill before settling on this temporary resting place.

These cattle have been around for so long that we have seen some calves being born and witnessed others growing up, like this one grazing on a pavement outside a house.

This one is taking a rest while its elders graze on.

They do a lot of resting … or waiting.

On some occasions we can count over 30 head of cattle moving together.

This dam they frequent is now dry.

And still they come, fanning through the suburbs to graze in public open spaces (is that why the municipality seldom mows them anymore?), along pavements, pulling at overhanging branches of trees, and feasting on any garden plants within their reach.

BOVINE LOVE

Members of the Urban Herd.

BIRTH IN SUBURBIA

This cow, a member of the expanding Urban Herd, gave birth unaided in the middle of a patch of Senecio flowers growing on some open ground outside some houses in the middle of a suburb.

In no time at all, two local dogs came sniffing around.

The cow was still raw.

Her udder was distended.

While she must have already eaten her placenta, the dogs seemed to be particularly interested in something in the patch of flowers once the cow and her calf had moved away.

By then she had endured enough of their unwelcome attention and nudged her calf towards the relative safety of a nearby park.

We saw them elsewhere in the town a week later: cow and calf appear to be thriving.