Chased by Cows

A friend and I took our collective 5 children for a hike on Friday to a mountain not far from our house.  We rode the chairlift up which was a new experience as I have a third friend's dog with us.  Lucky did very well and just sat on the chair and watched the cows below us without so much as a yip.  We got off the chair and began our hike along the ridge and a small incline to the peak.  Pretty uneventful hike until we came across the first group (herd? pack?) of cows.   Now I have seen groups of cows before but generally there is a fence of some sort between them and me.  Here we were clearly on their territory.  And they were curious.  Mostly about Lucky.  The kids just sort of wandered through the cows and I prayed no one got stepped on or pooped on.  I walked quickly through the cows hoping Lucky wouldn't start barking at them making them really angry.  She didn't.  I think she was pretty unnerved by them.  Anyhow the cows followed us for a awhile until we started up a rather steep incline.  We continued along at the top of this incline until we came across more cows.  They followed a bit but weren't quite as curious.  More hiking.  A third group of cows.  At this point we started down the mountain and the cows decided we were there to take them home so all 12 (15? 20?  I didn't take the time to count them) followed us down the hill.  For awhile I would stop every so often and turn and say shoo, go home.  Sophie pointed out they probably spoke German so she tried telling them to scram in German.  They ignored both of us.  We eventually came in sight of a barn and we realized they must have thought it was barn time and we were taking them home.  Just in front of the barn there was a cow gate they couldn't get through so we left them and continued our descent.  A little scary but I kept reminding myself that I have never heard of a cow attacking a person so hopefully they were just looking to be milked!

Our group for the day

Our friends

View



Here they come- down stairs even!



Kids on the cow gate

getting closer!