Saturday, February 20, 2010

Scenic Sunday - Can Cows Swim?

Today I spent a glorious few hours at Cattle Point. It's probably one of my favourite local haunts. It's beautiful and, for a city park, very peaceful ... in terms of human noise, I mean. Crows, ravens and seagulls bark at each other constantly but when you're by the ocean, and not in bed trying to sleep, they sound great.



So, Cattle Point... yep, cows. In previous times, cows were shoved off barges from the mainland to swim to the then farm on the shore.




(I didn't know cows could swim... actually I'm still not convinced. Does anyone know?)



That's Koma Kulshan (aka Mount Baker)... gorgeous eh? Although I'm in Canada, Mount Baker is in the US state of Washington and like many mountains in the area, it's an active volcano. It's the most active volcano in the Cascade Mountain Range after Mount St Helens - remember her?

Koma Kulshan is to the east of Cattle Point. Here's a view to the south.



The Olympic Mountains, also in Washington State. The bit of land with the buildings on it is still Victoria (Oak Bay), Vancouver Island, Canada and then the mountains behind are in the US across the Juan de Fuca Straight.

From Cattle Point, I walked down to Willows Beach... driftwood fun, dog walking and people chillin'. Nice.





Anyways... (Hi Neil), to conclude, it was a beautiful day. Warm sun, crisp fresh air and signs of spring everywhere:





19 comments:

  1. In my experience, cows drown in deep water. My parents' farm used to flood very badly and they lost a lot of animals back in the 60's.

    Plus, it's a public school boy thing to tip sleeping cows into rivers....

    J.

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  2. Spring? Spring! Not fair..

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  3. spring? lucky u. we'd have som 50+ days of freeeezing (ca.-15C--20C) weather and most snow in 15ye. brrrr...!

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  4. i hear cows may fly 8D
    but swim? surely not.. ;)

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  5. I seem to remember reading about cows "fording" rivers when the pioneers settled the Western United States. From what Jayne commented, perhaps it depends on how deep the water is.
    Thank you for showing the signs of spring. It's like a sneak peek for the rest of us.

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  6. Cows can certainly wade as they can be up to their hocks with no difficulty.

    Pics are lovely!

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  7. I think I've read somewhere that some farmers on Scottish islands used to swim the cattle from one isle to another, and if wildebeest in Africa can swim I don't see why cattle can't. I'm very envious of your spring blossom.

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  8. Good god - blossom, stuff growing, green things. Luverly!

    Great pictures and a lovely beach area - inspiring indeed

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  9. Apparently, they can but prefer not to and only short distances.

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  10. Cows can mos def swim - i've seen them do it with my own eyes (tricky to do it wi someone else's i suppose) between the Orkney isles of Westray and Papa Westray. Really.

    And despite rumours to the contrary, they can also walk both up and down stairs - i've seen them do that on river ghats in Kerela.

    Spring though? In North America? So soon? All we've got's a coupla measley snowdrops, a few budding trees and lots of ice around Embra at the moment. Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

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  11. Spring, blossom. God it's like another country. So jealous.

    MLM says he has seen cows swimming in cowboy films so it must be true. He also says they are full of gas so will float...

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  12. Cow tipping....hmmm.... urban myth or reality?
    Anyways.... spring?....you are so lucky. Eight blow here right now. Brrr!

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  13. Nah, not urban myth, these boys were at Shrewsbury School and they tip them into the Severn.

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  14. Fly tipping is much easier

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  15. Wee buggers eh Jayne? Were the cows sleeping at the time? I always thought it was a myth that you could do that.
    In fact we had a long discussion about it at work.....work related of course!

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  16. Yep, it's sleeping cows!

    No-one at my comp ever did anything bad like that....

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  17. hmm. i can't imagine cows that swim. maybe the water was shallow, or they just wanted to pretend they could swim and made it to the other side so they didnt feel bad about drowning cows :) check out my blog if you get the chance. http://www.retrostruggle.com

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