Last Friday I had weather cows, this week it’s frozen cows. From the “winter that wasn’t” department, it seems that the winter in Colorado was bad enough to cause some free range cows to seek shelter in/around a rustic shelter cabin – and then froze to death in place.
The carcasses were discovered by two Air Force Academy cadets when they snow-shoed up to the cabin in late March. Rangers believe the animals sought shelter during a snowstorm and got stuck and weren’t smart enough to find their way out.
The cabin is located near the Conundrum Hot Springs, a nine-mile hike from the Aspen area in the Maroon Bells-Snowmass Wilderness area.
…
Forest Service spokesman Brian Porter said rangers saw about six cows inside the cabin, and several dead cows lying around the building.
“There is a lot of snow, and it’s hard to determine how many cows are there,” Porter said.
U.S. Forest Service spokesman Steve Segin said Tuesday they need to decide quickly how to get rid of the carcasses.
“Obviously, time is of the essence because we don’t want them defrosting,” Segin said.
Heavy snow falling. Cows seek shelter in and around hut. Much more snow falls, blocking doorway. Cows near shed also trapped in deep snow.
Mystery solved!
Hoser says:
April 17, 2012 at 10:06 pm
Oh yeah? What’s wrong with rednecks? They’ll get it done a lot quicker and cheaper. ……
Maybe you can send you a few of our rednecks to fix up Europe one more time. Like the last time our boys did that in 1942-45 and let’s not forget the All Americans in 1918.
Some of us had been working on those problems for more than 2 years 1939-42 and 4 years 1914-18. What took your rednecks so long?
I want to know why the door wasn’t closed, if there is one, and there should be. Do they want tired hikers stumbling in and finding a sow bear with cubs in residence? Or a rabid raccoon. Ah heck, just to keep the snow out!
Udder nonsense.
One needs to be English and of a certain age for this one:
A farmer walked out into his field after a severely cold night and saw that his whole herd of cows were frozen solid.
He phones the vet who arrives but shrugs his shoulders saying there is nothing he can do. “There is someone I know”, he says, “who should be able to help you”. He makes a phone call, then takes his leave.
An hour or so later a mini drives onto the farm and out gets a rather short old lady. “Frozen cows?” she asks. “Leave this to me”. So the farmer goes back into his kitchen for a cup of coffee. After 15 minutes or so he hears the sound of cows mooing from the field. Stepping outside he is amazed to see all the cows warmed up, walking around and breathing steam into the cold air.
Thanking the old lady, the farmer insists on paying her for her services, although she tries to refuse. He writes the cheque anyway, and asks her for her name. Her reply: “Thora Hird”.
Ah a freezer full of steak. Why remoove them, a pleasant feast for the wild animals when they thaw out, the bears will be udderly thrilled.
A sad end for the cows. A nice bit of practical surrealism to suggest the subsequent use of explosives, though.
Thora Hird! Haven’t herd that one in a while!
This reminds me of the old joke about calling the English Actress Thora Hird
No pressure…
I worked as a summer student in a large explosives plant in my home town. While I was away at university, there was a terrible accident at the plant and a building called the Nitrone blew up at shift change, killing about a dozen men. I went home that weekend, and drove down to see what was left.
This steel and concrete building, about the size of a small public school – a few classrooms and a gymnasium – was apparently vaporized. There was nothing left but the floor slab, and the long grass was flattened in a radial pattern , all blades pointing towards the centre of the blast. A house across the river was blown about 6 feet back on its foundations.
So yes, explosives will do the job just fine – you just have to use enough – it will also clean up the cabin, and the surrounding trees.
phlogiston says:
April 18, 2012 at 1:16 am
DAME Thora Hird if you please! A wonderful actress, sadly no longer with us. Even at the age of 88 she was still sharp enough to accurately portray an elderly dementia sufferer, in the TV drama Lost for Words. She would doubtless see the irony of this story.
@Bruce April 17, 2012 at 9:38 pm
“When you let off a kilo of ANFO the tree and dirt would bounce a couple feet into the air, then fall back down in a big cloud of dust. ”
Strangely enough, after the zoological gardens in Kew (London) was hit by the hurricane of 1987, most of it’s collection of trees was nearly pulled out of the ground. A year later, all the older, more moribund trees, had started to thrive again. They now revitalise old trees using a mechanical method to achieve the same effect.
Pointman
Pamela Gray says:
April 17, 2012 at 7:04 pm
Bet the wolves won’t touch it. They only go after bleeding beef.
Since when?
Solution: One CH-54 + one of these. (should serve about 10 to 15 thousand, shhh don’t tell PETA)
Wait! Explosives can only be used on climate-denying cows. Just ask the 10:10 Climate Change Campaign folks.
DetCord and dynamite 1988 Yellowstone – one dead Old-timer bull bison near Canyon Village. Risk -many fire fighters and a few tourists with entry exit greencard in daylight hours, Threat – territorial Grizzlies protect a temporary food cache and run off any trespassers. Solution – blow up the dead bison. What nonsense most observers said, this would leave many food caches around for many Grizzles to smell. They bowed it up Henry, into many many very small pieces, picking up the few larger pieces that would create the need for grizzly prize protection. Several hundred meter noticeable droplet fall. End result no grizzles but many small scavengers mostly birds. Incidentally birds do have a pecking order.
phlogiston says:
April 18, 2012 at 1:16 am
One needs to be English and of a certain age for this one:
A farmer walked out into his field after a severely cold night and saw that his whole herd of cows were frozen solid.
Thats an oldie!! if a cow blows up, is it known as chuck steak?
I’m surprised they don’t just let them thaw then blame it on all the excess heat caused by CO2.
I think most of the responses to this article have been improperly critical of the forest service. The portions Mr. Watts choose to quote are to show the irony regarding the “winter that wasn’t”. However, if the reader wants to poke fun at the explosives idea, it would have been informative to read the cited article.
They want the cows hauled away because, “officials are concerned about water contamination in the nearby hot springs if the cows start decomposing during the thaw.”
I imagine that diarrhea on a hiking trip would be a miserable experience. A very large mass of rotting meat may not disappear quickly enough, since many predators are territorial.
The explosives were not the set plan. “”The options: use explosives to break up the cows, burn down the cabin, or using a helicopters or trucks to haul out the carcasses.”
Floating your ideas is not a bad thing. Rather, it allows you to learn from the feedback. A barrage of criticism for even mentioning the idea is a good way to convince people to say nothing to the public.
Joe Dunfee
The obvious solution lies within a sentence which includes the word chainsaw.
Here in these parts, vultures and coyotes will reduce a cow carcass to bones in less than 3 days. We just drag them over the hill yonder so we don’t have to watch.
I can’t imagine that anyone is spending this much time “worrying” about “what to do.” This is a non-problem.
Keeps a bureaucrat in a job, I suppose.
I once knew a redneck oil rig worker (at that point doing something else). He told me about camping in the Mohave desert and discovering a rattlesnake hole about 100ft from his campsite (they will usually have a large number of snakes together, possibly hundreds). Having some dynamite along, he decided to “remove” any possible threat from the snakes and dropped a stick in. Although he did kill a few, there was then a large radius of very angry snakes. He came back some days later to retrieve his camping gear.
Explosives?
Lost their marbles.
Cut em up. Frozen or thawed – no big deal.
By June only bones will be left. just like the elk skeleton found high centered deep winter snow over a wide ditch. Picked clean by local scavengers. I should have taken a picture.