Florida’s wild cows
March 7th, 2007 by admin
We’ve heard of so-called “nuisance wildlife,” but “nuisance cattle?” Monday’s Charlotte Sun-Herald reported that the DeSoto County Sheriff’s Office had received complaints from the owners of an orange grove about cows eating oranges and damaging irrigation systems.
Although cows escaping from ranches is not unusual, what is interesting is that some of the cows that the sheriff’s office were trying to catch were “nearly wild cattle that had been left untended for the past couple of years.” A sheriff’s deputy explained that the cows were very skittish around humans and hard to capture; he guessed that they hadn’t had much contact with humans.
Wild cows, in Florida? Even though cows have been domesticated for thousands of years, it’s nice to know that they can survive “in the wild” if needed.
Debates with meat-eaters often involve silly hypothetical questions. A question we’ve heard many times is, “What are you going to do with all the cows, let them go?” Florida’s wild cows prove that this could, in fact, be an option.