Cows as Compasses

I been observing the cows since I saw this thred, and I got 4 or 5 small herds to see as I travel to the big city...

Cows stand hither tither . EXCEPT where there are power lines... (electro magnetic beef)

I wanna know how they get them little white birds assigned one to a cow, and how they stay white. (would be an interesting contract to negotiate, I think)

Power lines, huh. Veeerrrry interesting . Neither here nor there, a lot of nurseries have their lots under power lines, at least in the LA area...

Bird/cow ratio I don't know about, though I've seen some neat photos with white birds and elephants). I don't remember white birds by the cows in Ferndale, though snowy egrets were in the general vicinity. Snowy egrets..
maybe they got to be dirty egrets and I didn't notice them.

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Ferndale? Didn't know you lived in Ferndale in CA.

You didn't know the Jorgensens, did you?

No, I lived in Eureka after I moved from LA (Ferndale 15 miles south) but we had both friends and artists and clients in Ferndale.
Jorgensen sounds familiar..

Alas, I may be the only person on a2k who remembers George Gobel -- "you're a dirty bird..."

When I first arrived in Manhattan, the man that hired me told me I seemed like a george gobel to him, in the way I spoke and comported myself. Lonesome George also played music, as well as being a comedian. He had a wonderful version of Twelfth of Never.

Meanwhile I have seen a LOT of cows in the past week and am struggling to remember what direction they were pointed. (I'll certainly be paying better attention to that from now on.)

FF, watch them with the big power lines as well...

will do

No you're not. Also, "Unless you just can't help it", and Miss Molly Bee.

I'm figuring if they were all pointed one way I would have noticed it over my lifetime (hey, I was along on the shooting of a film short on cattle raising back in the late fifties). This report seems to be using words like "more often than not"...

Still, aerial photos, who knows, they may be right.

That makes sense, Duck.

So, we need to hear from CowDoc, eh?

Hmmm.... Facing south (in the northern hemisphere) would put the sun in your eyes for much of the day. If that was the motivation, wouldn't they face west in the morning and east in the evening?

Sure, and tilting like hands on a clock..
but that would leave out facing due south, as the sun is never from due north..

Cows sometimes make me nervous. You can't tell what is going on behind their eyes.

Actually, once you have spent enough time getting run over by them, you can tell EXACTLY what is behind their eyes. On the subject, however, this is nothing particularly new. I think it was in "Huckleberry Finn" where Mark Twain described Huck passing himself off as a girl when the lady interrogating him asked "If there are fifteen cows grazing in a pasture, how many will be facing the same direction?" Huck correctly answered "The whole fifteen, ma'am." I'm not all that sure myself that it's likely to be due north or south, but they damned sure will usually be facing the same way. I always attributed that to the basic herd mentality that almost all ruminants adhere to.