When I moved to my present house in Union County 10 years ago it was to escape the Charlotte sprawl—now I'm right back in it. All the undeveloped land around my subdivision is now filled in with more houses and shopping and business areas. Two blocks down the street from where I live was an intersection with four vacant corners—beautiful woods and pastureland. Today, three of the corners are filled with commercial activity. On the fourth stands this beautiful beacon to a time now past—and I wonder how long it will last:
And the fenced pastures that go with the house are now home to a half-dozen Texas longhorn cattle. I have no idea who owns them or how they got to North Carolina, but they are a beauty to behold:
This pair seemed to go together; wherever the big one went the little one was close behind:
In this photo, note how long and thick the tail is on the adult. This gives you an idea of the horror of "tail docking" that is carried out in many commercial factory dairy farms—taking a pair of large bolt cutters and cutting the tail off dairy cows—with no anesthesia—because it's a nuisance in the milking parlor, leaving a stub of 6-8 inches long. Besides enduring the obvious pain, the cow can no longer use her long tail to swish away flies and biting insects. What an abominable practice—harming animals for the convenience of man. (In a previous post, I linked to an ABC Nightline undercover video that shows this practice.)
You can see this youngster's horns just beginning to grow:
It's easy to understand the origin of "Hook 'em, Horns!":
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