How to tip a cow

One newspaper's bumper sticker of the week said, "Excuse me for driving so close in front of you."

A Saturday comic strip named "Mutts" had one cartoon character asking another, "Oh Great Sphinx, how many people are working in City Hall?"

The answer came back, "About half of them."

Many of the four-legged animals have the ability to sleep standing up. Horses and mules seem to do it a lot. As a boy, I heard it was possible to sneak up on a sleeping cow and push her over. I asked my grandpa if that was true and he said, "It's one of those old wife's tales that has been around for a long time, but to me it sounds like a good way to get kicked where it might really hurt." Having faith in Grandpa's advice…I've gone through my life so far without knowing whether or not a guy can really "tip over" a sleeping cow.

Not to worry anymore! Researchers at the University of British Columbia have finished a scientific study on the feasibility of "Cow tipping." Their goal was to estimate newtons of force required to topple the average cow. My dictionary says a "Newton is a unit of force in the mks system which imparts to a mass of one kilogram an acceleration of one meter per second per second."

Our Canadian friends established through educated estimates, "the angles between left and right hooves and the point of the push. Using computers they entered the resistance of the cow to downward pressure and calculated the other variables."

Dr. Margo Lillie wrote the final report. She determined that, "Two people could exert the required force only if the cow made no reaction at all to the original touch, but that more than likely, a successful tipping would require at least five people."

This University of British Columbia report will of course lift a great cloud of concern and apprehension from the minds of all of us thankful; however, I'm hoping Dr. Lillie can get funding enough to test her findings using different sized people.

For example does anyone in the world know how many newtons can be generated by an offensive lineman of the Seattle Seahawks?

Until questions like that are answered, all the completed research remains iffy and meaningless…in the mysterious world of cow tipping.

Maybe an apology is in order for my wrongly crediting Shakespeare for a quote traceable to Sir Walter Scott (Oh what tangled webs we weave, when first we practice to deceive). That err last week is the very first one I've made since starting this column 44 years ago, even after using hundreds of quotations from hoards of sources.

Luckily, some alert person on the Hungry Horse staff discovered the wrong credit in time to insert a parenthesized correction in the middle of the column pointing out my mistake. That is also a first in 44 years.