So, there I was… It was 1996-ish, and I was driving from Carbondal, IL to Rapid City, SD. A pretty long haul.
While heading Westward on Highway 90 between Sioux Falls and Rapid City, we were treated to quite the sight of flat plains as far as the eye could see. This was cattle country, for sure! Long, lonely fences kept the cattle off the highway, and an occasional antelope (I think) kept them from being too lonely.
So the story - well, two of them.
First is the bails of hay. They were the large cyclindrical ones, not the old-style rectangular ones. We’d see them every so often, stacked two wide, by two deep, byt about five or so long. A Myan pyramid of cylindrical hay bales. The cows would meander over and have a snack whenever they wanted. Of course, they ate from where they could reach, which meant the bottom layer of bales. There were many cases where we could see that the bottom bale on one end was nearly eaten away, and the top bale as hanging precariously - obviously held in place by what could have been no more than one cow-bite (scientific measure of volume) of hay.
We didn’t see any crushed cows, but it wasn’t a far stretch to imagine.
Second was the burnt cows. Yes, I said burnt (if you’re my wife, burned sigh) ennyhoo, there were more than just a couple cows on this trip that were horribly burned. They were laying on their sides/backs, feet up in the air, and starting to bloat. They were all burned black (most of the cows were a mix of white and black, but not these), and lay in a nearly perfect circle of charred grass.
After some speculation on our part, we decided that the culprit was either **(a) **Satanic cow sacrificers, (b) Space Aliens, or © lightning.
I kinda lean towards ©, but it certainly not as fun as the others…