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.
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Cow-boom!
Ever hear of maggots? It will all be down to the bone in a week with or without predators. The water ‘contamination’ issue is absurd too. Fish decompose directly in water so what’s the problem?
Bruce said
“In this case a charge of ANFO would both raise the roof nicely and give a good slug of blood and bone fertiliser to the trees methinks.”
Sounds like planting the seed of another global warming scare.
[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.”]
They said helicopters were too expensive and they didn’t want to use vehicles in a wilderness area. So the set plan is indeed to use explosives.
“But Segin said using helicopters is too expensive and rangers are worried about using trucks in a wilderness area, where the government bars permanent improvements and tries to preserve the natural habitat.”
http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2012/apr/18/frozen-cows-pose-fresh-quandary/
On the topic of explosives, I’ll relate a story my father told me. Seems he passed through a town in the south and saw the local fire company hosing down houses that were clearly not on fire. On inquiring he was given the following explanation. It was in a limestone area where in order to dig a privy pit it was the usual practice to set off a stick of dynamite and shovel out the fragments, repeating the operation until the hole was deep enough. Well, this one fellow was doing that and after setting off one last charge he looked into the hole and saw that there was now no bottom to the hole; he had apparently broken into an underground river, leaving him with a privy pit that would never fill up. His quite envious next door neighbor saw this and figured that the same cavern must pass underlay his half-full privy pit, too, so he took a stick of dynamite and . . . .
Well, you know how it is. Adults like to give the children a chance to sort things out for themselves, but sometimes you just have to step in.
And the proper response to this floated idea is that it does not float. It is a stupid waste of effort time and money for a situation that nature is well equiped to take care of herself with no meddling from man.
Critters die in the woods every winter — ever wonder why you don’t trip over dead deer and elk every spring when you go for a hike?
I used to work at a local large company just outside Boulder Colorado. Every spring the local prarie dogs have a population explosion. They are protected from human control by the local tree huggers who get terribly upset if anyone talks about poisoning them and removing them from the open space frequented by joggers before they have the inevitable mass die off due to bubonic plague. Once they become infested they close off the openspace to human use until the plague finishes its work.
When they have their spring litters, the little critters have a contest to see who can run across the entry road during shift change without getting hit by the cars. A few dozen of them are eliminated from the competition every shift change.
One afternoon I was sitting in the car just at sun set listening to the radio prior to starting my night shift when I noticed a large coyote calmly walking down the entry road in plain view like it was an eat all you can smorgasboard (which it was).
I noticed the next morning that there were absolutely no prarie dog carcasses at sun rise. Every evening the fur covered night buffet crowd came in and cleaned up the dead critters at no charge.
Larry
I happen to have a ranch. On that ranch dear, elk, moose, bear, coyote, wolf, bob cat, turkey and other criters pass through. Never see any left overs, except the morning dudu. Everything is cleaned up by the masses.
Nederland has been dealing with a frozen dead guy for years…maybe they can offer a few tips on what to do frozen meat in a cabin…?
dcb283 says: “They said helicopters were too expensive and they didn’t want to use vehicles in a wilderness area. So the set plan is indeed to use explosives.”
The headline said they were in a, “quandary”. So, they didn’t have a solution they were happy with. We have a lot of valid reasons to criticize government. I think the sort of criticism we are seeing a lot of in this thread tends to both dilute the more appropriate criticism, and diminishes the value of places like Watts Up With That. A reader on the fence, may simply abandon the site because of seeing a lot of baseless criticism calling an agency idiots.
Joe Dunfee
Hmm. Didn’t know that, but it’s a mooot point. Unless there’ve been reintroductions, the last wolf in Colorado was a female that trekked down here from Yellowstone, in about 2009. Before that the last known was in 2004, killed crossing I-70.
I don’t think the same is true of other big critters that might scavenge – coyotes, bears, lynx and mountain lion. They might dispose of the carcases after, say, a summer or so. That’s a lot of meat.
I would agree with Bill, it’s a lot of meat. 6 cows frozen together in an enclosed space, at altitude, with partial shade. It may take years to decompose. In the tropics, it would be gone in weeks. The crows, ravens, jays and turkey vultures won’t be walking through the front door in mass.
Blow it up, or while there is still snow on the ground and the fire danger is moot…burn ’em…can you say Thermite?
Trying to decide whether to pull the Brits irons out of the fire for them yet again?
Concrete has a different way of responding to the energy in an impact pressure ‘wave’ than blubber has (or tissue; fat, muscle etc) … exceed the threshold at which the concrete remains in ‘crystalline’ (for lack of a better word) form and it fractures rapidly, disintegrating in the process. Blubber doesn’t, but rather ‘propagates’ a pressure wave much like an incompressible fluid. Now, if they hurry and the cows are still as ‘frozen as glass’ ice crystals ‘break’ in a similar way …
.
LOL, if the cows are frozen inside the cabin and they use explosives, what do they intend to do with the remains of the cabin not to mention what will be buried under the rubble?
Just use a chain saw and throw a BBQ for the neighbors.
I’m sure the FDA would allow the meat from these cows to be fed to children at public schools…as long as it was first treated with ammonia.
Man, that anti-British/anti-American stuff gets old very quickly. You’re both equally stupid – can it stop now?
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0txzFdI9ic0&w=640&h=360]
Chico or Bust.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0txzFdI9ic0&w=420&h=315%5D
Chico or Bust.
depending on how slowly these poor beast froze, the meat may not be edible, plus we do not know if they froze, unfroze, and refroze…plus the body cavitys would have been the last thing to freeze and you never butcher and eat meat with the guts contaminaing the meat, that is were all the bacteria is…. for instance any Lobster that dies in a tank or in your fridge must be tossed even though it has been dead a short period of time …I am a hunter and the verty first thing one does is clean (gut) the animal, particularly in freezing temps as it eadier while they are warm
OMG this reminds me of a story told to me by campus detectives (proctors) at Princeton many years ago (over 50). Seems some students got a hold of of a cow from a nearby dairy farm. They marched it through the front door of a dorm and up the stairs to a narrow hallway on the second floor. The proctors told us about a unique feature of cows. While they can walk up stairs, they can’t back down and the hallways were too narrow for it to turn around.
There was only one way to get the cow down. In pieces. And yes they had to dispatch the cow and remove it in pieces. They described the process as “very messy.”
“It may take explosives to dislodge a group of cows that wandered into an old ranger cabin”
WHAT?!?!?! What is wrong with you hippie city people? It doesn’t take explosives. It takes a small dog to dislodge cows. Or better yet, it takes a tiny .22 bullet or two (better because then you get to eat them). What kind of g*y b*st*rd said that explosives were needed? I’m guessing it was someone from California.
In Colorado, when someone freezes to death, you have to warm them back to 98.6 and ascertain that there are no vital signs and then pronounce them dead. Not to dump on the forest service
(sarcasm), but they missed a huge opportunity to increase the level of complexity by at least an order of magnitude. By having to put the cows in a special thermostatically controlled water bath to bring them slowly up to cow body temperature, have a team of veterinarians certify that they are indeed without their mortal coils and then blow them up, the gubment could easily have spent a quarter million dollars on this and put the contingency as a line item in next year’s budget
as well.
Whenever* I read or hear the words “explosives” and “cows” used in close proximity, I think of the game “Unexploded Cow”. http://cheapass.com/freegames/uxcow
*This article is, IIRC, the first time other than that game that I have seen those words together.