I would say stay away from the fence, but....
"N.H. couple have beef with police for Tasering cow; Say animal was returning home" June 11, 2011|By Martine Powers, Globe Correspondent
PELHAM, N.H. — Just when the cow thought things couldn’t get any worse, the police showed up.
Things started out badly last Saturday morning for the 1-year-old heifer when she was wrangled away from her herd at a Dracut, Mass., farm and loaded onto a trailer to make the trip to her new owner. When she arrived at the residential Pelham backyard that was to be her new home, she saw her chance.
She pushed through a gap in the barbed-wire fence, darting in front of vehicles and across the busy street into nearby woods. Residents saw the brown-and-white cow run past their windows and tried to corral her back to a pen in her owner’s backyard. After a couple hours of failed attempts, they called police.
When Pelham police officers arrived on the scene, they did the only thing they could think of: They fired their Taser guns.
Her owner was not pleased.
“It was almost like [the police] wanted to punish the cow for ruining their afternoon,’’ said Doug Hirsch. The shots were unnecessary, said Hirsch, as the cow was already headed back to her pen when the guns were fired.
Hirsch’s girlfriend, Wendy Bordeleau, filed a complaint with the Pelham Police Department, arguing that officers used unnecessary means in their effort to keep the animal under control.
“Because our cow was subjected to repeated and prolonged shock, I seriously question the competence of the Pelham Police Department and their indiscriminate and brutal use of their weapons,’’ Bordeleau wrote in a letter to the Pelham Police Department, which she also sent to the Pelham-Windham News. “It is morally reprehensible that these officers would abuse an animal this way that is not causing any immediate harm to anyone.’’
The Tasers were fired three times, Sergeant Michael Pickles said. The first two shots were ineffective, but the last shot sent a jolt of electricity into her body. The heifer, who Hirsch said weighs about 500 pounds, barely flinched, however, and kept walking, eventually making its way into a temporary pen, where residents were able to lasso her.
“We told them to stop to Tasering the cow, because it wasn’t doing any good. They were just scaring the thing,’’ Hirsch said.
He said he and Bordeleau had purchased the cow to help keep the grass trimmed in their backyard....
Who cares what the reason, the cow should never have been treated this way.
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